Nicola Davis - Is there life after plastic? The new inventions promising a cleaner world
Barely a day goes by without a new anti-plastic initiative:
the Dutch
supermarket with a plastic-free aisle; the Bali inhabitants sweeping
the island for jetsam, the moves to get plastic
out of teabags - and even out of Lego.
And that was all just this week.
But can we - or should we - aim to move beyond plastics
altogether? What are the alternatives to a material that has dominated
packaging for 70 years? Promising new technologies are vying for attention, but
plastic is so ubiquitous – and so useful – that it will not simply disappear.
Rob Opsomer, systemic initiatives lead at the Ellen
MacArthur Foundation believes that 50% of plastic packagings could be recycled
if they, or after-use systems, were better designed, and 20% could be tackled
by reuse schemes. However about 30% of plastics need a fundamental rethink to
prevent them ending up in landfill. It’s a sentiment that is gathering pace, with small
businesses, laboratory scientists, corporate giants and individual innovators
scrutinising every aspect of the plastic problem, from product design to
sophisticated new biodegradable bioplastics.
New materials: Among those exploring alternatives to traditional plastics
is Jeffrey Catchmark, professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Penn State
University
