Mobius Musings; All that Glitters…
I have been procrastinating on this blog post, because… but let us jump into it.
One of the biggest outcomes of 2020 was the boom in social sites. Social media content creators had the arduous task of creating more for an audience that has time, and some truly did not disappoint. One person I “discovered” during the Rona year was Mark Rober who genuinely envy. Mandem is living my childhood dream with all the inventions he is excogitating, and for me who grew up wanting to be Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Dexter from Dexter’s Lab, in my eyes, Mark has made it. One intriguing device he created is the Glitter Bomb, a device that checks all the boxes for fun and engineering and he has gone on to improve the device (FYI, this is a rabbit hole). In the building of the bomb, Mark explains how one key component was, glitter, and he had to purchase biodegradable glitter for the bomb, and this tweaked my interest, What is biodegradable glitter, and why does it exist? and with that, I set off to those two things. And with that allow me to share my opinion on what can be best described as oil and plastics and capital.
Glitter was, in ancient times was processed from malachite and mica, but as modernity would have it, we started manufacturing glitter from plastics, and herein lies the problem I believe. What essentially exacerbates the problem is that glitter particularly is a microplastics, making its environmental effects far more detrimental to the environment — I need not dwell on this. Plastics are largely a by-product of the oil processing, an industry that is known to be the largest polluter of the environment, and it is worrying, that, even with the effects of plastics on the environment, and specifically glitter (microplastics) have on your body, production of this poison continues. What is even shocking, is that Kenya — my home - banned the use of single-use plastics in 2017, However an article published in August 2020 in the NY Times suggests that this crucial policy direction is under threat after Kenya signed a trade agreement with the US!!! Makes you think, what is our plan? As that thought simmers, you stumble across this well-known fact, that only 10% of the world’s plastic is recycled and it's actually cheaper to manufacture more than recycling it, and the recycling symbol has is more of a marketing strategy than what it actually stands for, as pointed out in a report for the Society of the Plastics Industry in 1993. The report actually points out that,
”The code is being misused… Companies are using it as a ‘green’ marketing tool.”
That said, why dedicate a post to it? Well, I think I am puzzled by;
- Why the uptake of plastic alternatives is taking a while
- Why the lack of agency from policymakers
While the adoption of alternatives to plastics exists and are in my opinion no brainers, I wonder if this lack of adoption because of a fight with capital (industry) or just humans being laggers. While economics has been an argument against there feasibility, I am yet to be convinced that it actually is. Worldwide, countries are looking to replace plastic with an alternative, paper for shopping bags, glass for PET, steel and bamboo for straws, banana leaves for wrapping, Eucalyptus cellulose used to manufacture biodegradable glitter… and this list is endless. While I realize that each of these has different pro and cons and any lobbyist of a company can argue against any alternative to plastic, I think it is critical to open up this discussion, and not limit it to plastic but the larger oil industry and the many by-products.
The oil industry is at a tipping point. At a point in 2020, as we dealt with a global pandemic, oil prices went down to zero dollars (0$), while this was an outlier, it does point to a trend, that the hydrocarbon age is coming to an end. And if industry moves are something to go by, that end is nigh. General Motors (GM) have an ambitious plan to only sell electric vehicles by 2035, Tesla Motors is there, Volkswagen (VW)tried and got burnt, but it doesn't mean they will stop there. This essentially means that these motor vehicle companies will have to specialize in software more than automotive engines. This while obviously being a threat to big oil, will not end it. I, however, postulate that such moves will ensure the inevitable death of the industry, just as the oil industry killed the carriage industry at the turn of the 1900s. And we see this as Coca Cola have as the plan to “Break Free from Plastics”.
The wheels are turning! And just so you know biodegradable glitter comes in many forms, but the most common is from Eucalyptus cellulose.
Fodder for the Cranium;
How would a plastic-free society realistically look like? What are these ramification to the cosmetics, or Telcom or medical industries? I genuinely have no answers to this, but that is the beauty of the Mobius Musing, it is for us to find solutions as we avoid the Cobra effect.
Till next time, I end with this;
“Even at personal level, we can all reduce, re-use and recycle, what is embraced as Mottainai in Japan, a concept that also calls us to express gratitude, to respect and to avoid wastage.” Wangari Maathai 2009
