PLASTIC ACTIVISM

Every year in the U.S. over 50 billion plastic bottles are used and this equals to about 1,500 bottles being purchased per second in one year. (Tucker, 2015) This described how our today’s society uses as much of plastics as we want without valuing them. 

Boyan Slat, a 19 years old boy who claims his design invention can help clean up the plastics in the seas in just five years. His design initiative is called ‘ocean cleanup’, it aims to collect the floating plastic in the ocean but allowing life animals to pass through unharmed, and these plastic waste materials can be recycled. Slat is an engineering student who always thought about plastic waste, his idea came up to hime at the age of 16 in the summer of 2011, when he was in Greece, he said “I saw more plastic bags than fish,” on 26 March 2013, Slat’s TedX talk went crazy on the net, he says, “Suddenly we got hundred of thousands of people clicking on our site everyday. I received about 1,500 email per day from people volunteering to help.” He set up a funding platform which made $80,000 in 15 days. With these money and volunteers, they made the ‘ocean cleanup’. 

< http://www.futureearth.com.au/ocean-cleanup/ > viewed 15 May 2016, Future Earth

< http://3tags.org/article/20-years-old-student-develops-an-ocean-cleanup-machine-that-could-clean-the-oceans-in-5-years >

viewed 15 May 2016, Abe, Futurology, Nov 2015

The ‘ocean cleanup’ is an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms will span the radius of a gyre. The booms performs as a funnel where the angle of the booms can suck rubbish in. The debris enters the platforms where it will be take out the water and eventually stored in containers until collected for recycling on land. The advantage of using booms instead of nets is because with nets, marine life will be caught and may be harmed.

At the same time solving an environmental problem, Slat stated with his invention he could make up to $500 million a year from recycling the collected plastic wastes. 

< http://www.design-vagabond.com/search?updated-max=2012-09-03T08:00:00-04:00 > 

viewed on 15 May 2016, posted by KAT, August 2012, Frame

This piece of art installation is made by a Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi and is exhibited in Rice University Art Gallery, he used the most simple materials: plastic sheeting and black hot glue. He used these two materials to create this marvellous piece and it appears to float in the space. He named this artwork "Casting the invisible", stating the plastic is invisible as its colour is transparent, with his installation, he used recycled plastic sheeting to prevent environmental issues. 

< http://www.benwustudio.com/graft/n4mqrmt2tngsj53sig4gcf599r3ua9 >

viewed 15 May 2016, Benwustudio, Graft, 2016

An interested design called 'Graft' is made by Benwu Studio, they are located in Shanhai, Beijing and New York. Graft is a definition of a shoot or twig inserted into a slit on the trunk or stem of a living plant, from which it receives sap. 

The idea behind this design is being environmental friendly, these recyclable tablewares are made out of bioplastic, the main sources materials is the plants. For example, a celery stem can serve as the handle for a spoon, a petal of artichoke can then becomes the bowl of spoon. The texture and form in nature autonomously exist with a function. This kind of design is easy to make and very appealing, people normally don't easily throw away useful and pretty objects. By this, Benwu Studio made it into a successful design. 

References: 

• < http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2415889/Boyan-Slat-19-claims-invention-clean-worlds-oceans-just-years.html > Viewed 13 May 2016, Sarah Griffiths, 9 September 2013, Could a teenager save the world's oceans? Student, 19, claims his invention could clean up the seas in just five years. 
• < http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29631332 > viewed 13 May 2016, Vibeke Venema, 17 Oct 2014, The Dutch boy mopping up a sea of plastic 

• < http://www.design-vagabond.com/search?updated-max=2012-09-03T08:00:00-04:00 > viewed 14 May 2016, Kat, Frame, Designvagabond
• < http://flavorwire.com/293958/yasuaki-onishis-gorgeous-casting-of-invisible-mountains > viewed 14 May 2016, Emily Temple
• < http://www.benwustudio.com/graft/ry96qm9nm5sdlc8tzwb2ii3a8u11nv > viewed 14 May 2016, Benwu Studio

PLASTIC INVISIBILITY

Why is plastic so easily ignored, it is everywhere and in a strange way, nowhere because we have stopped noticing it. 

We all live in Plasticville, “the plastic age” (Freinkel 2011, Tonkinwise 2004), it appears everywhere in our life, Freinkel wrote jotted down some of the objects in her house that contains plastic, and these can be as ordinary as a toilet seat or cellphones. “We tend to ignore or forget about plastics yet they are literally everywhere.” (Tonkinwise 2004) In another word, plastics are everywhere but why don’t notice these materials? 

< http://www.bayside.vic.gov.au/living_in_bayside/recycling_plastics.htm >

viewed 12 May 2016, recycling and waste

According to Dr Cameron Tonkinwise, he listed out four main points of why he think plastics are so easily ignored, these are: transparency, uniformity, lightweight and cheapness. From my perspective, I think ‘transparency’ and ‘cheapness’ are the main reasons why we ignored plastics easily. “Firstly, Plastics can be transparent.” (Tonkinwise 2004) The success as a type of packaging that is made out from plastics have been used among on a large amount of products. "About 250 billion pounds of raw plastic pellets are produced annually worldwide and turned into a tremendous variety of products, from cars and computers to packaging and pens."  (Wired News, June 5, 2004). From this we can see how much plastics have been produced by 2004, and it’s not hard to think how much it have increased till today. 

Tonkinwise then continues “Most significantly in these economically driven times, plastic does not attract attention because it is so inexpensive.” The design of plastics are widely used in now a days world, because its cheap and everyone can afford it. Even though some supermarkets doesn’t offer free plastic bags, customers can still afford buying one or two that only cost $1 each. Tonkinwise explained the reason why plastics are so cheap by “…because the cheapness of the former allows them to be consumed at rates that are blowing out the cost of the latter.” (Tonkinwise 2004) 

< https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/27/41/82/274182b5e85b761604b3e95fe82f15d3.jpg >

viewed 12 May 2016

Plastics are also recyclable, it helps to reduce the amount of plastics that are thrown into the ocean. “ It is absurd that a plastic with even a 5 year life gets used only once as  packaging.” (Tonkinwise 20014) With that long lifespan of one single plastic, why do they only get used once? Tonkinwise suggested all plastic products should be like washable milk bottle, that kind of design need to be applied to every plastic therefore they are ‘recyclable’. 

< http://ibhangarwala.com/recycling.html >

viewed 12 May 2016

Tonkinwise concluded his perspective on plastics by stating “Once we developed that habit, we began to apply it to all materials.” In another word, once we start ignoring plastics, we will start to ignore other materials even though they don’t have a harm on our life. We need to re-value the importance of plastic. 

References:

• Cameron Tonkinwise, November 2004, Everywhere and Nowhere: An Introduction to Plastics, Australia, EDF, viewed 12 May 2016
• < http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-21/more-plastic-than-fish-in-the-oceans-by-2050-report-warns/7105936 > ABC news, 21 Jan 2016, More Plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050, report warns, viewed 12 May 2016
• < https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-new-plastics-economy-rethinking-the-future-of-plastics?utm_content=buffer528b9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer > World economic forum, 19 Jan 2016, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics, viewed 12 May 2016
• < http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-plastics_enemy.html > Jan Lundberg, Plastics: Your Formidable Enemy, viewed on 12 May 2016

Plastic Facts

< http://www.healthandpersonalcare-products.com/the-economical-plastic-bottles-for-sale/ >

viewed 9 May 2016

What is the history of plastic, what came before it, why did plastic become important, how is it made, what are its applications, benefits, drawbacks, what are its implications for design.

What is plastic? The word ‘plastic’ comes from the Greek verb ‘plassein’, which means ‘to hold or shape’, it can refer to any artificial material. This substance has reached so deeply into our everyday life and Susan Freinkel referred this as “…of course, we all live in Plasticville” in her book ‘Plastic A Toxic Love Story’. Plasticville is a term that used in 1950, and it is the name given to kits of plastic buildings, the full name is ‘Plasticville, U.S.A.’. 

All plastics have one thing in common which is they are all polymers, it is a Greek term for “many parts” Polymers are made up by thousands of atomic units called monomers linked into giant molecules.

We started living in the world of Plasticville since the mid nineteenth century, but according to Susan Freinkel’s book, she stated others fix the date to 1907 when Leo Baekeland the first fully synthetic polymer, and he said “now we have a fourth kingdom…” We first think plastics are so unnatural, Susan used alien as a metaphor for plastic. Plastic pegged its dawn during 1914, where it was commercially used during World War II, it was increased by 300%. American military pulled polymer chemistry out of the lab into real life. The major plastics we know today: polyethylene, nylon, acrylic, styrofoam all came out during the war.

< http://shop.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=265_419 >

viewed 9 May 2016

< http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/205402/2247483.aspx >

Susan stated plastics became everything through“…plastic challenged traditional material and won…. Plasticville became possible - and perhaps even inevitable…” (Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, p. 6.) She then calculated the amount of plastics been used in the past seven years , from 0 in 1940 to nearly six hundred billion pounds today. Comparing with 1960 to now, the average of plastics American consumed was about thirty pounds, but today, they’re each consuming more than three hundred pounds per year. Susan then stated Australia isn’t far behind, the average Australian consumes plastics are half of what Americans consumed which is about 150 pounds a year. (Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, p. 8.)

“Humans could disappear from the earth tomorrow, but many of the plastics we’ve made will last for centuries.” (Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, p. 9.) This quote from Susan’s book indicated the power plastics holds in our world now a days. 

References: 

• < http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/conflicts-in-chemistry/the-case-of-plastics/all-history-of-plastics.aspx > The history and future of Plastics, 
• Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, 2011, Boston Globe