As much as I love wooden products, they won’t be the only thing I write about or advocate. I also intend to buy, reuse and recycle plastic items too. But is it possible to knowingly buy plastic in a carbon footprint crushing, guilt free way? Having thought about this long and hard, I think in moderation yes. As long as you are not wasteful and buying it with the purpose of it lasting a lifetime, namely once you have finished using it, it can have a life in another home and eventually it can be repurposed or recycled.  When I look around my home, I see plastic everywhere, it’s combined with many other materials and the plastics combined on products look like they have different properties. I have a lot of wooden products and furniture too, but in my kids rooms, 95% of their toys are plastic and they break. That is not cool, nor guilt free.

If everyone was to go out tomorrow and only buy wooden products I’m really not sure you could use the term ‘sustainable’ anymore….there just wouldn’t be enough to go round for our growing population. Realistically I don’t think there would be enough reclaimed wood either.  If there was a worldwide frenzy and suddenly everyone was buying wood or reclaimed wooden homes, furniture and designer products, do we really think there would be enough natural resources to supply such a demand?

I don’t have any stats or qualified answers to hand today, just my own personal opinion. Let me think…………erm No! Because the population is growing and has grown, we are taking up more and more land, therefore taking up land that would be needed for harvesting more of these natural materials. If you think about how long it takes for trees to grow, as well as other resources, the amount of wastage of those resources….packaging, poorly designed items, furniture that breaks easily. Plus items that can’t be recycled because they are coated in something or mixed with chemicals that you can’t recycle. It does not take a genius to work out that if the demand was there many businesses would not give a damn about where the wood came from so long as they could make money,  a lot of people buying would not question where it came from so long as the trees or forests on their doorstep weren’t disappearing. It would turn all the good work that smaller and ethical manufacturers are doing into a joke, especially if every manufacturer claimed to have the same morals to sell higher volumes, somewhere in there you would have liars and money grabbers. There is a need for balance and assessment of where we are currently at.

We need to think before we buy, this is for sure, but as designers and artists we also need to think about how we make too. Technology is a wonderful thing when used in harmony with natural resources and environments. Our current natural issue is apparently overpopulation, so let’s be realistic. People buy plastic, I buy plastic, kids love plastic and we currently need plastic, it’s not going away and if we all just bought wood at the present time we’d be doing more harm than good, this I am sure of.

Plastic, it’s bright and colourful, it comes in interesting shapes, it can be cleaned easily and it is tough and durable. It’s every parents and kid’s dream come true in that respect. The downsides are that you can’t easily paint it or repurpose it unless you melt it down and turn it into something new. Of course when you melt it, it let’s off gases and vapours that damage our mother earth. But there are different types of plastics, some are better plastics than others because they can be melted down over and over again whilst retaining their strength and having a lower impact on the environment. One such plastic is polypropylene or PP as it is often abbreviated to.

Why use polypropylene or PP?

It’s more environmentally friendly that other plastics

Polypropylene  was invented by Paul Hogan and Robert Bans in 1951. Apparently 9 people claimed to have invented it, but these two American research scientists we’re granted to own the patent. So it has been kicking around for a good 60 years now and it came about because the gaseous waste from oil such as propylene (also known as Propene) and ethylene were burned, simply because they were good for nothing. Wikipedia says – “Propene is a byproduct of oil refining and natural gas processing. During oil refining, ethylene, propene, and other compounds are produced by as a result of cracking larger hydrocarbon molecules to produce hydrocarbons more in demand”…so they come from oil rigs..I get that bit.

But it was discovered (somehow) that the gases from these oils being burned could produce something more useful….PP or polypropylene and by making it you could also reduce atmosphere pollution. Its production process also stops the potential pollution of rivers, streams etc due to water being used during the contained cooling cycle in its production process.

Its Recycling Possibilities Are Vast  

It’s entirely recyclable, plus it meets the manufacturing requirements of the Environmental Commission.  It complies because it uses a minimum of natural resources, reduces emissions, has a long working life and holds optimum re-use properties and appeal.

It’s already in high demand with packaging manufacturers because it can be recycled more than 50 times without losing any of its strength.  But recycled PP can be used for so many things such as furniture, car parts, pots, and the list goes on. I realise it holds a great marketing angle for packaging manufacturers but that is not really the point I am trying to make with this article…packaging should only be absolutely necessary or minimal and preferably biodegradable or reusable, rather than recyclable.

Where was I, oh yes, It Kicks The Rear Of Other Plastics

It’s probably the most durable and flexible of plastics today, but it is far superior to PVC. PVC may not give off chlorine when burnt, but it does emit water vapour and carbon dioxide. Because PVC is such a loser of a plastic it needs to have lots of things added to it to make it strong and fit for different purposes…like windows and doors. But the major problem with it is that it can’t be easily recycled as it has all these other chemicals mixed with it and that costs a fortune for a recycling plant to sort out. It also can’t be safely burnt because of all the rubbish it puts back into the air.  Polypropylene however, is destroyed simply by burning, because its calorific capacity is similar to that of oil. So that means incinerators can use less  fuel and operate more efficiently.

Strong and Durable

Products made from PP are much stronger and last longer than products made from similar materials. Being a kind of plastic (or at least very well related to plastics) PP products can be easily wiped clean, tough and have a very high melting temperature so they won’t age or dent easily.

So there you have my humble opinion, I think there is a strong need to still buy and use plastic. But and it’s a big but,  if you want to buy plastic buy cautiously, thoughtfully  and buy well designed strong items made from PP Polypropylene.