The Perils of Plastic

Welcome to The Perils of Plastic, where you can find out everything you’ve ever wanted to know (end even the stuff you didn’t want to know) about plastic all in one place. This site is meant to be a collection of important, yet often unclear or little known facts and tips about plastic. Browse the tabs above to find out more about plastic product hazards and recycling (i.e. what you can do).

But first, a quick introduction to plastic:

What is plastic?

According to dictionary.com, plastic is “any of a group of synthetic or natural organic materials that may be shaped when soft and then hardened…: used in place of other materials, as glass, wood, and metals, in construction and decoration, for making many articles, as coatings, and, drawn into filaments, for weaving.”  The word plastic actually comes from the Greek word plastikos, meaning “capable of being shaped or molded.” It was first manufactured in 1855, and since then the plastic industry has grown and branched  to reach into almost every aspect of our daily lives.

Are there different types of plastics?

Yes. Actually, there are many different types of plastics depending on what quality we inspect. In general, there are two types of plastics: thermoplastics and thermosets. Thermoplastics are able to be molded, heated, and then remolded again and again. On the other hand, thermosets cannot be remolded once they have hardened. This property of thermosets makes them very difficult to recycle.  Plastics can also be sorted on the basis of their chemical structures or on the basis of the process used to manufacture the plastic.  Finally, plastics are separated for recycling using  numbers 1-7 which were first assigned by the Society of Plastics Industry in 1988 (this system is known as the SPI resin identification coding system).

Why should I care about plastic?

1. Your safety. Just take a look around: plastic is everywhere. Think of your morning routine. Say you get up and shut off your alarm clock (which is made of plastic). You brush your teeth (plastic toothbrush and plastic toothpaste packaging), and you take a shower (plastic packaging of soap, shampoo, etc.). You get dressed, and your clothes are made of polyester or nylon (both plastics). So really, you’ve only been up for half an hour, and you’ve already come into contact with a host of plastics. But are these plastics really as safe as we assume they are? In actuality, plastics contain some pretty nasty chemicals. See the Product Hazards tab above for more information on this topic.

2. The safety of the environment. Petroleum and natural gases are crucial ingredients in plastic, making sustainability of the industry a key issue. The manufacturing process of plastic creates many toxins as byproducts (See the Plastic Production tab above). Furthermore, the toxins contained in the plastics themselves do not just disappear when we’re done using the plastic. These plastics and their toxins end up in landfills, where they can remain for hundreds or thousands of years, leaching chemicals into the ground. Sometimes, plastic can also release toxic fumes when burning. We’ve only got one world to pass on to generations to come. We need to take care of it.