Plastic is unsung life-saver during this health crisis so let’s not demonise it
It's good news then that top British scientists have been exploring ways to make plastic much more environmentally friendly. Over a billion items of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) were used by the NHS in the first month of the health crisis and since then millions more have been made in the UK or flown in from abroad. This includes face visors, goggles, medical gloves, aprons and gowns. All of them made out of plastic materials and all of them saving lives on a daily basis throughout our care services.
Without these plastic shields, all our doctors and nurses would have little protection against the ruthless virus spread by coughing.
Much of this kit is single-use, disposed of once it has served its daily purpose, but that means the NHS is hungry for plastic. It's fortunate that the UK is home to one of the world's biggest plastics-producing industrialists.
"The chemical industry gets a lot of flak generally over global warming and plastics," says Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire founder of global chemicals titan Ineos. "But if you look at Ineos we're producing the plastics that are going in to medical equipment—face masks, ventilators, sterile gloves, eye visors, it goes on and on. We've seen a huge increase in demand for anything going in to medical products."
But that's not all that plastic is doing to protect us during this pandemic.
"The other area we've seen a huge increase in demand is food packaging," says Ratcliffe, "because everybody wants their food wrapped up. It's more hygienic and it lasts longer."
Until coronavirus, supermarkets were leading the charge against plastic packaging but now it is essential that our fresh food is protected from airborne contagious droplets.
Even single-use plastic bags, the target of a successful green campaign, are making a limited return for solid health reasons.
Packaged raw meat, especially chicken, should not be placed in reusable bags alongside ready-cooked food and some health-aware cashiers are offering separate bags to customers.
A recent investigation revealed that the exterior packaging of more than one in a hundred raw chickens sold in Britain—a total of nine million—had potentially infectious levels of Campylobacter bacteria. Now more than ever it makes sense to protect shoppers from catching food poisoning infections that could be an extra burden for our already busy hospitals.
The UK government has currently suspended charges for single-use plastic bags used in online deliveries because they help "reduce the risk of contamination" and speed up the process.
Flimsy plastic bags are often a more productive use of energy than heftier bags for life that are harder to dispose of.
A UK Environment Agency report found that high-density polyethylene lightweight bags are superior to paper because they require less energy and far less water to make and take up less space in landfill.
Many cities in the US are calling for a temporary return to single-use shopping bags.
"With identified community transmission, it is important that shoppers keep their reusable bags at home given the potential risk to baggers, grocers and customers," said New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu in March this year.
Confidence building measures will be needed to get us back on to the high street into stores selling non-essential products and plastic shields will play their part in this too.
Face masks and transparent screens at checkout counters will help us all feel safer when we start browsing and buying again.
If we are now living with more plastic to ensure our safety during this pandemic, how can we mitigate its impact on our environment?
It has been estimated that more than eight billion tonnes of plastic has been produced since the 1950s and some of it ends up polluting our land and seas.
British scientists are taking the lead in discovering new ways of dealing with our mountains of waste plastic. One ingenious solution is to engineer an enzyme that eats up plastic.
First discovered in a Japanese rubbish tip in 2016, a team of scientists at Portsmouth University is trying to supercharge a naturally occurring enzyme so it can speedily break down polyethylene plastic in days rather than the usual hundreds of years.
"Serendipity often plays a significant role in fundamental scientific research and our discovery here is no exception," says Portsmouth Professor John McGeehan. "While there is still much work to be done, this is exciting and necessary research that demonstrates the power of looking to nature to find valuable biocatalysts."
Some fungi can break down plastic while the wax moth larvae, often used as fish bait, can devour polythene bags.
Another solution is to turn plastic into hydrogen fuel. "Waste plastic contains a large amount of stored energy that is currently being thrown away," says Professor Erwin Reisner at Cambridge University's Department of Chemistry.
Their process of "photoreforming" uses the energy in sunlight to break down plastic into hydrogen that can be used to power cars and public transport.
It is one of several projects receiving a total of £20 million from the government backed Plastics Research Innovation Fund.
Chemicals giant Ineos is determined to go further, breaking down recycled plastic into its essential raw materials—hydrocarbons.
"The key advantage is that using this approach all plastic waste, even the lowest value mixed waste, can be recycled," says Dr Peter Williams, Group Technology Director. "Although it's early days, progress is being made where recovered monomer liquids [that can be reused in chemical processes] are already being tested in our pilot plants."
Their view is that plastic is a miracle substance just too good not be used to help the world become a better place. Plastic rather than steel pipes are a cheaper, more effective way of providing clean water in poor countries.
Plastic materials used in the fuselage and wings of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner passenger planes makes them lighter and more energy efficient, burning 20 percent less fuel than similar aluminium-made aircraft.
With no end in sight to the need for millions of pieces of PPE to fight Covid-19, it is time perhaps to look at plastic in a more kindly light. Helping to save thousands of lives in hospitals and care homes, it will also be vital in getting us back to normality in high streets across the country.
So here's to another set of heroes—the makers of plastic and those teams of scientists dedicated to making it an even cleaner and more effective material.
Surprisingly it's helping us to save the world.
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