EDITOR’S COMMENT
PRAISING PLASTIC
IT WASN’T THAT long ago that
the plastics industry was a pretty
beleaguered place to be. It was di cult
to pick up a newspaper or turn on the
television without seeing something that
took it as read that plastics were, not to
put too ne a point on it, a bad thing.
It’s fair to say that a lot has changed
between then and now. And, as with so
many things, the thing that has made
the di erence has been the COVID-19
pandemic. Here, the requirement for
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
among medical sta and the population
in general has made attitudes to the
heavily-demonised ‘single-use plastics’
somewhat more nuanced han they were
even six monhs ago. This has been in
spite of the fact, that amid the calls for
larger and larger quantities of PPE, the
inconvenient fact that it is made of singleuse
plastics has been largely ignored.
And make no mistake about it, we are
talking about veritable mountains of
these materials that have been produced
and used worldwide in a few months and
now must somehow be disposed of.
The interesting thing, of course, is that
nothing about the materials themselves
has changed. They are exactly as useful
and life-saving now as they were a few
months ago – and just as problematic
from an environmental point of view.
All that has changed is the way that they
and the role they play in our lives are now
perceived.
Until now, this sense of balance and
perspective about plastics has been sadly
missing from the debate aboout their use
and their future.
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No-one is pretending that single-use
plastics do not pose any envrionmental
problems or that we should not seek
better alternatives. What the last few
months should teach us, though, is that
any such critique must also be tempered
by a real and realistic understanding of just
how intrinsic and critical plastics are to our
lives, health and welfare.
Paul Fanning, Editor
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