Don’t buy Plastic products

Well I’m becoming even more concerned at the state of ecological thinking. As I previously wrote in Paradoxes in Sustainable Product Design Life Cycle Analysis LCA would prefer a plastic kettle over a Stainless steel kettle despite the disadvantages of plastics that I listed.

However after a little more reading I realise that it isn’t just the difficulty in keeping the plastic uncontaminated with other types of plastic in recycling that is the issue this is rather a guise. The real issue is the chemical makeup or plastic which is not really suitable for continued reuse the chemical bonds break down so that even if the plastics is separated meticulously into the different types, the resulting recycled plastic is likely to not be as mechanically strong it will lose some of its properties in reprocessing. Coupled to this the effect that UV light has on plastics and you will start to realise that a 10 year old television’s plastic casing is no longer very desirable except in a down cycling stage where it may be used to make a kerb stone or turned into a recycling bin.

You may ask what the problem with down cycling is, well its that this plastic should be reused in another T.V. otherwise the new T.V. needs to have more oil extracted from the ground and processed into new virgin plastic. Oil that we are running very short of and extraction and processing of which adds to the environmental problems.

Plastics are in terms of materials fairly new the plastics revolution erupted in the 1960’s with cheaper disposable goods feeding the affluent baby booming generations that prospered after the struggles of their parents throughout the 1940 and 1950’s due to second world war rationing. Plastics enable new organic shapes to be produced in bright vibrant colours, products were cheaper and fashions started to change more frequently. The advent of mass produced plastics mean that more people could move with the times and follow the design movements of the day unlike post war styles such as Art Nouveau and Deco which were restricted to the upper classes.

The problem is that cheaper products mean that people consume more, cheaper products mean that more of them can be bought, more plastic consumed. Product life spans have tumbled, my grandmother owned an electric iron from the early 1960’s it was given to my mother when ours broke and used right up until the mid 1990’s in fact it still works today except the technology has improved so it is no longer used. But modern irons last between 3 and 5 years from my experience, the technology isn’t the reason for this monumental drop in life expectancy, they aren’t made to last any longer. It’s down to cost people want cheap products and don’t get them repaired it is cheaper on the pocket to buy a new one. But not on the environment…..

Paradoxes in Sustainable Product Design

LCA is the commonly used tool in industry to assess products that are already designed and often in production. It highlights areas where the product has a high environmental impact based on categories such as extration of raw materials, processing, transportation, energy in use and end of life.

However is LCA just confirming what the producers want confirmed, allowing manufacturers to carry on with unsustainable practise and a seemingly clean concience because they have consulted LCA software. Also what is the purpose of analysing something when its already in or about to enter production, surely the damage has been done or development time already been wasted.

Consider this plastic would be the preferable material over stainless steel for manufacturing a kettle if LCA is consulted for the following reasons:

1. Plastic is a better insulator than Stainless Steel so the water would retain heat for longer.


2. Plastic has a lower density than Stainless Steel meaning that the product would be lighter and therefore use less fuel to transport


3. Less energy would be used in production due to less operations and a more maleable/mouldable material.

However here are reasons why I consider that a stainless steel kettle would be prefered

1. Metal is far easier and is therefore more likely to be recycled than plastic. In fact the inherent value of stainless steel will make it very likely that the metal will be recycled to a high quality allowing for reuse in a quality product and with a high percentage of metal return.


2. A stainless steel kettle generally has a timeless classic style which combined with additional durability would give the product a much longer lifespan that its plastic equivalent. Perhaps even three or more times, when I was a child my family had a classic Russell Hobbs K12 kettle for over 15 years. It was servicable as so had the element and switch replaced once during this period. Therefore if you factor in the consumer attachement to a more aesthetic stainless steel kettle you can compare it to the production of a least two plastic equivalents if not more in its lifetime.

The problem here is that LCA doesn't work on the basis of the lifecycle of the product in durability or the material and so doesn't account for the fact that the steel could be recycled many times with little loss in quality or strength.

So now some reasons why plastics shouldn't be used:

1. Plastics leach chemicals and small particles into water and over time this will increase encouraged by the heat and UV degradation of the plastic. Leading tio health concerns for the user in the long term.


2. Fumes produced in the processing of plastics and the injection moulding process are not only harmful to the environment but a severe concern for the workers especially in less developed countries with questionable health and safety measures and no accountability. Workers health could suffer in the long term with severe respiratory and skin complaints
3. Also why should the water remain hotter for longer its a kettle not a boiler, surely this only encourages unsustainable behaviour, the user should be encouraged to only boil what is needed.

So much for LCA it is in my view significantly flawed, and so you might ask how does this example of the kettle benefit the manufacturer. Well plastic is very cheap, products can be mass produced cheaply, with limited life-cycles, which will ensure the greatest revenue in the long term especially if a customer buys 2 0r 3 plastic kettles for every stainless steel kettle they may have previously bought. The disposable society we live in wasn't built on stainless steel kettles but with advent of thermoplastics in the early 1960's.

One thought to finish this rant what is plastic made from oil we really could do with reducing our dependance on that as yes it is used in the extraction and processing of Iron ore into steel but if this is recycled efficiently it will cut out the extraction stage next time round making for a much more efficiently produced product.