Should we respect our most hated material?

An opinion piece by Memobottle co-founder Jesse Leeworthy

(Approximate reading time: 3 minutes)

“Plastics are evil.” Say that to a passer-by and you’ll likely get a nod in agreement – and probably for good reason. Disposed single-use plastic products and packaging are scattered across the entire globe; polluting waterways, leaching from landfills, and floating in our oceans.

For those reasons, it’s fair enough that society has labelled plastic as an “unacceptable” material. But is it possible that we’ve got it wrong? Is it possible that the problem doesn’t sit with the material’s make-up, but instead with how it is used, and therefore how it is valued?

How we use plastic matters

The application of plastic is often unconsidered and wasteful. The cheaper it is, the more likely we are to consume it. The more trivial its application, the more likely we are to dispose of it incorrectly.

As individuals, we don’t value the material or the context in which the material is used, and we don’t realise how much we actually consume.

We can’t comprehend the amount of waste we create as individuals, let alone the collective impact we have as a society.

That's all to say, as consumers we’ve learned to think of plastic as being disposable and of low value, and often overlook its use in high value, longer term applications.

Let me give you an example. The modern-day car is full of plastic. It’s built into the mechanics, the doors, the rearview mirror, the interior, and in a hundred other places that you wouldn’t think of. Plastic is used due to its wide range of mechanical and thermal properties — strength, temperature resistance, mouldability, and being inherently very lightweight.

Now, what would a car be like if it didn’t incorporate plastic? You could transport yourself back to the ’50s to get an idea, but basically, we would be driving around in cars made out of metal, wood, and leather.

This doesn’t sound so bad at first, right? But the additional weight would increase the energy required to move the vehicle by many times over. From a Life Cycle Assessment perspective, reducing the mass of a vehicle is one of the best ways to make a car more sustainable.

The simple truth is this: because of plastic and other lightweight composites, today’s cars are exceedingly more efficient, even with the addition of all the modern safety features and luxuries that we’ve come to expect.

The problem lies not in the material, but in the way we value it and our habits of consuming wastefully. 

The plastic paradox

Over the years, we have let single-use plastic products become a part of our society in the name of convenience.

It wasn’t plastic that brought on single-use, it was our creation of a throw-away society that did.

In turn, the industry then found the best option to cater for it – functionally, environmentally, and economically.

What a lot of people don’t realise (that surprised me as well) is that plastic is actually an incredibly good material for single-use products, when compared to almost all other options. This is speaking in terms of environment, cost, lifespan, and performance.

When we started the Memobottle journey, we were focused on reducing single-use plastic water bottle consumption. But after delving into the issue further, we realised it was all single-use products that we needed to target. If the single-use industry stopped using plastics and moved to other materials, then environmentally we’d be worse off.

It's a massive paradox, and a case of misdirected blame. The issue isn't with the material, but with human behaviour and the way we consume.

If we can start putting more value on plastic, then we will stop using it for unworthy purposes.

Together, we need to stop putting the blame on the material and focus more on the detrimental daily routines that involve single-use products.

A cultural shift that respects materials is required… and we haven’t even talked about embodied energy yet!

If we stop using single-use products, then the industry will stop producing them.

Want to hear more from Jesse? Follow him on Instagram and TikTok.