Materialist Crunch
It's only plastic love.
I’ve been in crunch mode between multiple projects, here and abroad. All of them, directly or not, are about the materials of the current era: the elements of a man-made world. More as these projects continue – I thought I’d add a tiny slice to the site today.
Globally the annual production of plastic is in the range of 400 million tonnes. In addition, for every kilo of freshly created plastic there’s typically another 2.5 to 3.5 kilos of CO2 released through the processes of shipping, refining, and synthesis.
A little arithmetic shows that the global mean consumption is a little under 50kg per person each year. Around 108 pounds. Here in the US, we consume 53kg (~119 pounds) just in single-use packaging (and we’re not the leader in consumption). That skips the more durable plastics actually used in products (though they also get thrown away, eventually), as well as the CO2 load (that 2.5x to 3.5x additional waste).
It’s hard to imagine a recognizable future without plastics, a class of material that carries our food, protects our medications, clothes and protects our bodies, entertains our kids. Plastics contribute to nearly every manufactured item. Most of it is thrown away after use.
Our local Sonoma County recycling plant is one of the most effective in the US, as measured in terms of its successful “diversion” percentage of 85% – redirecting plastic wastes to be reused today, rather than slowly disintegrating into a mass of microplastics filtering through the strata of a landfill for the next hundred centuries or more.
