The Polys of plastic
Who doesn’t love plastics. They are an incredibly versatile class of materials that touch every part of our daily lives, composing our electronics, water bottles, cars, accessories, and even clothes. The laptop I am writing this on is made of plastics, most of my shoes are made of plastics, and the wood of the desk I’m writing on is coated in plastics. Plastics as a whole are too useful to ever give up using.
Modern living is improved by their existence, though they are not without their issues. Their low price and sheer ubiquity have allowed for the concept of disposable plastics to evolve, and this has wreaked havoc on the living environment. From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the microplastics in our blood, plastics are technology as any other, and we as a society need to figure out how to effectively deal with their effects.
Plastics have various categorizations depending on various properties and source materials. For example, Galalith is a plastic made from milk protein, and there are other plastics made from cellulose or fossil fuels. There are also differences in thermoset vs thermoplastics; thermoset plastics are set into a shape when they are formed and don’t noticeably soften when heat is applied, while thermoplastics soften with heat. I have favorites in both categories, those being Bakelite and polyethylene.
Bakelite is a thermoset plastic made from phenol and formaldehyde with a catalyst of some sort. This mixture is then placed in an environment of heat and pressure to set it. This relative ease of creation allowed Bakelite to be the first synthetic plastic, as it didn’t use other polymers or proteins like previous plastics.
The reason why I like Bakelite so much is because it has similar properties to ivory such as elasticity and sound which made it useful for billiard balls, reducing the demand for ivory.
Polyethylene is a thermoplastic that can be derived from a myriad of sources but is mostly derived from petrochemistry due to the sheer abundance of oil in the world. There are different types of polyethylene depending on how big the molecules are on average; bigger molecules tend to mean that the end product is harder and more resistant. This has led to some research into using ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene for body armor, but most polyethylene is used in consumer products such as water bottles.
Polyethylene is used for so many things due to its sheer versatility. I really like it, it’s hard to hate a plastic that can be used for anything. It’s also a good radiation shield, I found this out first hand when I held a radiation source on the end of a polyethylene rod.
Plastics all in all are very chemically resistant while being cheap, and this is where their downsides come in. When people are done with plastics they rarely get recycled. Instead, they get tossed and broken down, turning into ever-present microplastics. The waste gets everywhere, from inside of you to the bottom of the sea. Some can be burned under certain conditions like polyethylene, but most plastics have their own issues when it comes to disposal.
There are tentative solutions for breaking these plastics down or reusing them, but that is more expensive than just making new plastics. Even as this world gets choked with plastic I still want to admire how much it has changed our daily lives.