Welcome everybody to Episode 9 of the Paper and Plastic Show. And this show is where we talk about paper and plastic. This is the Ocean Ridge Studios. I got our friendly media personality, Jazib, behind the cameras.
Scarlett 2i2 USB-1:
You got me, Osman Hameed And today,
we're going to talk about a super important topic. Called by many people on our TikToks and Instagram comments as the devils spawn itself, so plastic is a really bad rap. Everybody says it's made from petroleum. It's polluting the planet. All of the dolphins are going to die. And there's this massive island thing on the ocean. And everybody is going to die and they stop using it. Okay, look, there is some truth to that. Plastic to a certain degree is one of the largest pollutants in the world. It is being, I guess misused in a way that we're creating a lot of plastic because it's cheap and making a lot of plastic products because they're cheap, but at the same time, we're not being socially responsible. We have not created the recycling programs in many places to maybe responsibly use that plastic. And especially in third world countries. And there is obviously a lot of litter and waste. But at the same time, it does not mean that we cannot be socially responsible because you can't just ban things. Yeah. And we talked about this in a previous episode that life is not so much about the black and white. It's about the gray. It's not about the and it's about the or because you can't just outright, just ban everything. Plastic is bad. It's the devil's offspring. Ban it. Diesel motors gasoline motors, engines are bad, only electric, ban them. You can't just be so black and white because different use cases, different moments, different economies, different countries, at different stages of their lives, have a different way of using materials. So I'll give you an example, like on my desk right here. Okay, this adapter, that's plastic, right? You're not going to make set of glass, you're not going to make some metal because metal, not a great combination. You're not going to make this out of wood, flammable. So what are you going to do? Just get rid of it all together. So you're going to use plastic, have to use plastic. These pliers, little hangers or pliers, whatever they are. Okay. Could you make them out of metal? Yes. Wood, probably not so durable, but still you could. You're not going to make them out of silicone because it's going to be a big bendy thing. So why plastic? It's cheaper. It's durable and it's less cheaper than metal because look, metal, once again, if you're being socially responsible, metal is very, very expensive to mine. Metal requires a lot of resources to mine. A lot of fossil fuels go into mining metal. So do you really want to use that with metal on this? Probably not. So once again, plastic or wood, that's your options, right? So this plastic bag, it's clear. Now, what else is clear, because you want to show the content inside, you can use glass, obviously not feasible, you can't use wood, you can't use paper, I guess you could use paper, but then you wouldn't see the inside of the contents, okay, say you don't care about the insides, paper is not as strong as this, I mean, not always it's also not as light, and it's also kind of expensive it's more expensive than this so why do they use plastic because of all the reasons mentioned above, And in most cases, this is recyclable, at the end of the day you can't plastic is not bad By nature plastic is bad because we make it bad You know what they say like the internet by nature is not a bad place But it's the humans that are using or misusing it that make something bad by nature. This comes from nature It comes from the ground plastic is it originates from petroleum comes from the earth It's not like it's an alien substance, right? It comes from the earth. It's a natural made from molecules You What makes it bad is our misuse of it. It's us using plastic one time and throwing it in the landfill. Because if it goes in the landfill, it's going to get buried in the earth and it'll stay in the earth for thousands of years. What is like the half life of plastic? Whoa. Okay. Nevermind. Plastic waste can take anywhere from 20 to 500 years to decompose in the earth. That means it never fully disappears. It only gets smaller, smaller, smaller, and it's going to stay there for 500 years. that's why it gets the bad rep because it lasts so long. Now look at it from the other perspective. If it lasts so long, it must be robust, right? And it must have some qualities in it that makes it more long lasting. And therefore more durable. So why not use that material for many, many cycles on your own to reuse it. And then step two, put it in the recycling bin so that it can be shredded. This is plastic that has been, recycled. It's been crushed down and it's been made into these pellets. And these pellets, you can melt them and you can make new. Plastic believe it or not, you know all of this plastic right here. This is ldpe You know low density polyethylene It can be melted down and it can be converted into new plastic and we got to start looking at plastic in that light That it's not something that is evil It's something that is very robust and it can be recycled almost an infinite number of times as long as the material can stay clean And it's a lot easier to purify plastic than it is to purify paper because paper, the contaminants get absorbed into it. Like paper, like a cardboard box, it'll absorb water. It'll absorb impurities. And over time, the fibers will break. Plastic bottle, use it for like six years and it can still be recycled. And that's super cool. And that's something we, how we got to think about plastic. reason we're making this, the show and this podcast is to educate and let you know that like you can do something about this just because you don't see those piles and piles of plastic in North America or Europe is because they're able to, dig big holes and get rid of the plastic, get rid of the waste and they can obviously over there. It does not mean that that garbage is not, just sitting there. If you can put in the blue bin And these countries slowly can adopt these programs to reuse and recycle This plastic can be a really powerful thing that we're not so much scared about anymore But we're just hey, it's one of our things that we use and it's just part of our many many Materials that we're all recycling and finding new creative solutions for so that's a wrap and we'll see you in episode 10