Paper, Plastic and People

When it comes to packaging, it is always this mind-boggling question “Paper or Plastic?” A hazy debate till date; consuming the common consumer, I started with asking friends and people. “Paper or Plastic”, why(s) and why not(s).

Upshots
90% ended up choosing paper.
Paper is readily biodegradable compared to plastic.
Plastic is harmful in some or other way to humans and environment.
95% of them never carried their own shopping bags in recent years.
70% reused their plastic bags though in rare instances.
98% of them look up to shops/retails to provide them with a positive alternative for existing bags.
Immediate alternative to plastic packaging/bags is only paper in their minds.
People are skeptical about durability of paper bags.
People like to reuse those plastic bags of cult and respected/popular brands.

In reality...

Paper can’t be a sustainable material, just because of its natural raw material and bio-degradability. We do a lot of deforestation to source its raw material; it is an unfair human play towards nature to use trees and plants as a source for an ephemeral substance like paper.
Then we bleach the extracted pulps and fibers from cut trees using chlorine gas; in turn those industrial effluents (we have 12,000 paper mills across the world, approx) will introduce chlorine dioxins in to our food chain.

In fact, we will need more energy for transshipment of paper bags compared to plastic ones. With all these pamper to encourage paper usage might exert a back pressure in the system increasing the demand for paper, which will call for more energy, more fuel and more cut trees.

The bio-degradability part; we ink them, print them with heavy metals and composite them with plastics, metals and what not, do we expect these other add-on elements to break down in to our environment along with paper when it is thrown away.

Then we have this recycled eco-friendly paper trying to save energy and natural resources, It is been said that, recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees approximately and every virgin wood pulp can be made and re-made to live as paper for 5 to 7 life cycles.
Though, only one-fourth of post consumer paper recycling happens across. The whole process ends up consuming more fuel and energy compared to plastic recycling. It also calls for strong chemical surfactants for de-inking and chlorine agents to bleach, releasing more harmful effluents in to environment. Efficient methods of paper recycling are either evolving or yet to evolve. Paper packaging alone accounts for 15% to 20% of yearly land fill.

Well, Plastics! facts and figures apart, the word plastic means ‘able to be molded’, true! They are molded in to every moment of our life. We see them littered everywhere around us, no doubts these inorganic creations and synthetic chemicals can be an effective technical nutrient to feed the industry with waste as food. We have enough of them as waste.

Plastics don’t get created by compromising sensitive natural inhabitants like trees and plants, at least till the time we switch over to bioplastics. We only need crude oil, which may be available for at least another half century or end of life plastics to give birth to new ones. Rather they have long and longer life cycles enough to persist in this environment even after human life cycles. They are already in our food chain; our hormones have become smart enough to converse with the inorganic chemical molecules. Not to mention birds, animals and water life, they don’t have any rights to spoil earth as we humans do.

Come on consumers! Pause and give a thought; we no more have the luxury of throwing away things. It is plastic or paper; we can’t just throw away anymore, there is no more an ‘away’. The problem is not only with paper or plastic, it is with the people.

There is this infamous concept of ‘3Rs -Reuse, Reduce, Recycle’. Actually, this concept doesn’t fit many sustainability frameworks. Let us forget the choice between ‘paper and plastic’ for a moment. Avoid this choice altogether. Use paper bags or plastic bags; but reuse them, allow their enduring life. One has to figure out instances of use (paper/plastic/others), alternative plastic bags or cloth bags can be of better choices. Diligent reuse will automatically reduce consumption. These concepts of reuse and reduce are not really new to us, observe your grand parents attitude towards consumption.

Think before asking for another plastic bag!

Daily Defies

Designers!, often referred as sensitive species, are we sensitive to the issues around. We have numerous chemicals, heavy metals and materials around us. We are still brewing new sets of synthetic creations from our laboratories with no counterparts in nature. Where are we leading towards?

With so much green washing around, now that most us care for the environment. We try and buy things made of recyclable/recycled materials, but these things which add up to your sensitivity quotient to environment might not be designed with further use in mind, I mean recycling these products towards their end of life.Recycling and reshaping them would have cost us more energy and additives than it’s entire life cycle. It might release more harmful byproducts than it’s previous life cycle.

Forget the recycled products. Let us deal with certain aspects from our daily life.

Soaps and detergents, this one is the best example of man’s passion for simplifying things, Universal design. Single soap for the entire country, even though water qualities and needs differ from place to place. Imagine the strength of a detergent to strip off hard stains, to work efficiently in hard or saline or soft water, classic case of “designed for the worst case scenario”. What would happen when they are treated as sewage effluents, when they come in contact with aquatic lives in the rivers nearby?

Then our beloved PET bottles, the source of water for many of us in recent times is capable enough to leach out antimony into the contents stored in them. Are we aware of this, do we have a positive alternative to this?

Take out your wallet and see, how many plastic cards we carry around, we use at least one of them everyday, and we wear around some of them all day (ID cards). Does any of them have it’s material mentioned with, so sad, there are 90% chances that they were made of PVC.

And definitely your leather wallet, there are chances that they were tanned using hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen.

The computer which I use, made of brominated flame retardant chemicals, have heavy metals like cadmium, mercury and lead.Those compact discs made of Polycarbonate has bisphenol-A, which can mimic body hormones.

And the dust particle from the 3 in 1 printer/photocopier/scanner has nickel and cobalt. Imagine the kind of indoor air quality that will persist in this environment.No wonder 90% of world’s population has developed some kind of allergic sensation.

More over, we always go wrong when it comes to the debate of “Plastic or Paper”.

And our food and cooking; we might be ingesting genetically modified food products unintentionally and fluropolymers from our non-stick cook wares every day.

I need another hundred pages to explain why these things that I mentioned are not completely safe. I will try and address them in the forthcoming articles. And frankly! I am not trying to scare people away; many of these things have effective and positive alternatives too, but who cares?

Sustainability Highlights

“We cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now. We are already breaking records with the intensity of our storms, the number of forest fires, the periods of drought. By 2050 famine could force more than 250 million from their homes . . . . The polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted. . . . This is not the future I want for my daughters. It's not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn't have to be.” [Barack Obama, Portsmouth, NH, 10/8/07]

His pledge for healthy environment proposes a system implementation to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050 and to encourage carbon trading. He also proposes clean energy economy, energy efficiency etc.

There is a proposal of new forum of largest green house gases emitters, G8+ BRIC countries (except Russia) but includes Mexico and South Africa and this forum to complement in developing post Kyoto framework along with UN.

His fact sheet also talks about new Lead free toys act; fight against mercury pollution, nuclear material and more importantly against genetically modified food crops.

Teflon Tale

Smart Teflon non-stick cook wares, what is that about them?
They help us to cook fast, saves energy and makes the whole process hassle free. Apart from this proverbial applications Teflon products are also used in apparels, automotive fabrics, exterior coatings, home furnishings, upholstery, sealants, cables and in semiconductor manufacturing.

Our fellow non-stick cook wares are usually coated with PTFE (Polytetrafluroethyelene) fluropolymer and sometimes with other fluropolymers over metal surface. We might be ingesting these fluropolymers along with the food we cook on them. Do we have PTFE on our daily menu?

PTFE has a melting point above 300 degrees and it will start to fume out above 250 degrees, usually we don’t cook at these temperatures knowingly, but broiling and use of fat/oil, frying meat etc can very well happen at these temperatures. Even though the raw material manufacturer doesn’t recommend these practices, how many of us are aware of this; when we can get a plenty of non-stick frying pans in this country. These degraded fumes are lethal to birds (claims the Teflon manufacturer) and can lead to flu-like symptoms in humans.

Well, then we have this PFOA (Perflurooctanic acid), also known as C8 used to make PTFE which is a likely carcinogen. Till date, PFOA don’t have any practical alternative. It can accumulate in human blood, has a very long half life in humans and does not break down in the environment. PFOA is used only during manufacture of PTFE and a traceable amount of it remains in the finished product, how bad is that traceable amount is a question mark.

In 2004, a renowned company in US settled 300 million dollars in a law suit filed by the residents living around its chemical plant producing PTFE, for contaminating the drinking water in that locality. Access to literatures, analysis reports on PTFE and PFOA are very limited. These chemicals are still undergoing rigorous safety reviews across various countries and organizations.

And to conclude, we still don’t know how bad PTFE and PFOA are.

End of Life - Facts

Maruti claims it’s newly launched A-star complies with European Union’s ELV (End of Life vehicle) standard.
ELV restricts the use of hazardous materials like lead, mercury, cadmium, PVC and chrome. Reuse and recovery will have to achieve 85% of the vehicle’s weight and reuse and recycling by 80% according to this norm, and these target levels will be revised and raised in another one year to 95% and 85% respectively.

MSIL’s adoption of ELV is good move in a right direction. It will bring out a lot of awareness if they had intricate details in their corporate web page.

Here is the sad side to this story:
In Indian situations, we have a real mystery towards a product’s end of life.
A product can be recyclable, but who is going to recycle it in a safe and sustainable way. Inappropriate recycling methods can cause more pollution than the product could have caused during its entire life. Hopefully we will have stringent environmental standards and technology for recycling in our country at least before A-star reaching its end of life.

Hard facts:
we recycled only 0.25% of electronic waste we generated last year in a safe way. Another 4.75% was recycled in the informal sector in urban slums contaminating the surrounding environment, and causing vulnerable diseases to people including children working in those scrap yards. It is rather evident that we don’t have a system in place to cope up even a 100% safe product around.

There is no proposed regulation or legislation for recycling in our country, and is not yet on the political agenda. By the way, you must be wondering what happened to the remaining 95% of electronic waste?!

Sensible design

A sensible way of designing products, when we started, we did not have many points to start off. There are number of modules and design methodologies practiced across the globe to preach sustainable design. We hardly had anything to benchmark with, at least in Indian situations. But to be sure that the outcome of any design process should enable us to remain in a natural context. Our conception and expression should be environmentally sensitive and be a responsible realization.

we need,

• Perpetual product aesthetics provoking owner’s pride and desire to retain them, indirectly living ahead it’s planned life cycle.
• Nutrient raw materials with infinite life cycle.
• Healthy chemicals nourishing humans and environment with positive impact through out their existence.
• Safe and endless feed of waste as food to nurture the natural cycle or the industrial cycle.
• Congenial industries with subtle systems, and pleasant places for people to work.
• Industries with the working principle of a tree and their effluents to cherish the environment around.
• Efficient utilization of renewable energy resources which are abundant and untapped.

We need products and services to create positive environmental impact, social equity and economical wealth.

PVC! - a known culprit

Vinyl chloride, a class I carcinogen is the monomer used to produce PVC. Humans have high probability of acquiring cancer due to vinyl chloride exposure. As a matter of fact 13% of death in this world happens because of cancer.

PVC is not bio-degradable like many other polymers. It is cost prohibitive to recycle PVC in a safe way, because of the number and types of additives used in its production. Less than 1% of PVC is recycled across the world. Its contents can leech out in to the environment at any point of their life cycle.

Phthalates are used as plasticizers to soften PVC, their content usually range from 1 to 40% in proportion with other additives. It can be found in soft toys, medical equipments like tubes & blood bags, cosmetics, surface coatings etc. Phthalates can leech out during use, causes liver and kidney damage and reproductive system damages.

PCB (Polychlorobiphenyl) is added as a stabilizing additive in flexible PVC. Dioxins and PCBs are produced as by-products when PVC is produced or burned. Production of PCB is completely banned in many countries since 1970 because of its adverse health effects. Dioxins can persist in the environment and can travel long distances.

Phthalates, PCB and Dioxins are identified as potential endocrine disrupters and carcinogens.
PVC is declared as ‘contaminant’ even before 10 years in many countries. Still many Indian majors are strategizing their timelines to phase out hazardous substances.

PVC is a commonly used insulation on electrical wires, used abundantly in construction applications, medical applications, automobile interiors, many forms of cards (smart cards, credit cards etc), and in clothing and footwear to name a few.

Design paradigm

How many times we questioned ourselves while buying a product or service about it’s what/whereabouts.
Do these products have chemicals safe to me and the environment?
I can’t feel good if these products around me in office and home are off-gassing chemicals harmful enough to cause inherent damage to my children and theirs.
Whether their raw materials extracted in a nutrient manner?
It’s not a pleasant picture if our future generation have to pay a premium for things which are today’s most common stuff which will become scarce tomorrow and it is just because we have this luxury.
Whether they are processed and produced in a healthy way to the environment?
I will carry home a feeling of social inequity along with the product, if their production and process methods were spoiling the surrounding waterways and smoking out harmful gases, while I live peacefully.
Whether their place of manufacturing/production has healthy occupational standards?
It is a feeling of guilt comes free with the product when you are aware that those fellow workers making things you desire have to tangle with soup of chemicals while you bring home a beautiful stuff.
Were they shipped to locations in an eco-friendly way?
With all these fighting for fossil fuels, I don’t want my product to be shipped half way across the world, allowing my next generation to fight and drill in obsolete places for few more drums of oil.
What will happen to the product when I am finished using it?
How about throwing them away in the middle of some ocean creating a floating soup to bio-accumulate in aquatic lives or creating a landfill near by so that our grandchildren can’t plant a single tree around.

That’s so much for me to know while buying a product, but it is high time we start to ask for these? How do we change this fundamental design paradigm?

Sustainable footprint

It all started with the philosophical, perhaps a selfish question. What will I leave for my future generation? May be more money and assets than my father did, may be fame/name (good or bad), and may be what.
I don’t have many things under my control, do I? Still I will fight it out with life for the betterment of my future generation, and this is supposed to be a sustainable development? Satisfying my present needs without depriving the needs of future generation. This is what every other human being does! Everybody wants to leave a footprint in this world.

But what is that we are actually leaving for our children and grandchildren? We never really have to worry about these questions any more; we unconsciously are leaving enough footprints for them to witness our existence in this world, like what?
Warmed up earth, devastated natural resources, polluted atmosphere and huge stack of landfills. Will you call this sustainable development?

We humans have grown together massively like never before in last two centuries. We developed countries together, controlled/killed diseases together. We did everything for our own comfort, but at what cost? We’ve started facing the world of limits.

We have melted so much of glaciers that 40% of world’s drinking water source is going to be obsolete in another half century.
We have burned enough fossil fuels to witness carbon-dioxide levels never seen in last 650,000 years.
We used our mother nature’s forest, oil, mineral deposits, how many of us have planted a single sapling?
We have more than 80,000 chemicals in production and use today; only about 15,000 chemicals have been analyzed for its safety to environment and humankind.

This is just a sneak peek of the entire picture we’ve painted so far; this is what we are leaving for the generations to come. This is the footprint we are leaving in this world.