Transcription
[Music]
In 1957, an intriguing House of the Future opens its doors to the public. It features a work surface that includes a combination supersonic dishwasher and storage unit, and a Family Food Center to store atomically irradiated food.
What's really futuristic is that the whole place is plastic. A four-wing plastic shell makes a snug and solid five-room dwelling designed for a family of four. In the 10 years it's open, 20 million visitors take a peek at the future.
But when it comes to taking it down, the house proves almost impossible to demolish. They have to use demolition cables to break it into tiny pieces. An early omen of the challenge plastics will become.
Almost every piece of plastic ever made still exists today—302 million tons of plastic, enough to fill every skyscraper in New York City. But consider this: in the 60 years since mass production began, we produced 7.8 billion tons of plastic waste—that's every New York skyscraper 23 times over.
[Music]
Yet without plastics, there is no modern world—no medicine, no computers, communications, or travel. Live without them? With them?
[Music]
This jet necklace, made of Bakelite, we consider it equal, if not better, than the natural mineral. Beautiful, and how light, and so smooth and warm to the touch. It's like the first fully synthetic man-made plastic.
It doesn't just look good; it's super light, super strong, heat resistant, and doesn't conduct electricity, making it a great insulator that can be molded into just about anything.
During the first half of the 20th century, most radios, telephones, household gadgets, plates, and even textiles all contain Bakelite. It really is a game changer. It's so strong that a seven-passenger car can be hung on a one-inch rider.
An engineer told me that all thanks to the American inventor Leo Baekeland. He came up with the word plastics from a Greek word "plasticos," meaning to mold or shape. In 1907, he mixes the chemical phenol from petroleum with formaldehyde and alcohol. We add some fillers, heat it up, voila—a big breakthrough with plastics.
Bakelite—a weird word, but way easier to say than its scientific name, polyoxybenzylmethylene glycol and anhydride. It's like a fine piece of amber. An easy mistake to make; Baekeland had been inspired by the plastics that occur in nature, such as amber.
What is plastic exactly? All plastics are made of molecules called monomers containing carbon. Using chemical reactions or additives, the monomers are linked together, a bit like a bike chain, and they become polymers.
There are two types of plastics: thermoplastics, which soften when heated and can be recycled, like carpets, clothes, and furniture; and thermosets, which, once molded and rigid, stay that way, like electrical fittings, work surfaces, or car bodies.
[Music]
We've been using nature's plastics for millennia. Latex from rubber trees has been used since ancient times to make baskets and clothes waterproof.
Shell and rhino horn? Yes, they're actually plastic, centuries in making jewelry and weapons. The difference with man-made plastics like Bakelite is that they're largely based on fossil fuels, like oil, manufactured chemically in a lab.
[Music]
As plastic technology evolves in the early 1900s, industries like car manufacturers make the most of this new material. They use it everywhere—as insulation for electric wires, spark plug caps, and light fittings—all of which make the cars much safer.
The old-fashioned glass treated under this new invention only gives you an old-fashioned headache.
[Music]
Plastic becomes so important in cars that pioneer Henry Ford even comes up with a new way of making the stuff. He turns to natural oil from soybeans and corn. In 1941, he shows off a new prototype car made mostly of soybean-based plastic—25% lighter than metal.
It's stunningly fuel-efficient, but Ford can't pursue the project because history steps in. The world faces more pressing priorities.
World War II speeds up the progress of plastic. The Allies need it to make fighting machines more efficient. All are in short supply; there's not much natural rubber either. Southeast Asia is occupied by the Japanese, so plastics become a substitute for traditional manufacturing material.
To cope with the demands of wartime, petrochemical companies build massive new plants. Plastic in planes and tanks makes gear wheels, synthetic rubber tires, parachutes, and ropes—all made from nylon.
Reporting down to welcome Mother Earth is depending on plastics to get him there safely. Plastic plays a huge part in helping the Allies win the war.
With the Nazis beaten, the United States is now in a great position to take the lead in plastics production. It owns two-thirds of the world's manufacturing capacity.
The plastics industry comes of age, turning from war to peace, from fighting to fun. It's a power being tried on during office hours. Men will, of course, be observing the lack of wrinkles around the foot.
[Music]
Plastics are about to conquer the world. It's the dawn of a consumer explosion.
[Music]
Most people had never heard of a television, but by 1949, as plastic makes TVs cheaper, Americans buy 100,000 a week. Between 1955 and 1956, 42% of Americans rely on condoms for birth control.
In 1965, the symbol of everything plastic also arrives: the plastic bag.
[Music]
Today, the world uses about 500 billion plastic bags a year—a million a minute. Through the 40s, 50s, and 60s, the plastic revolution begins.
Anne has her own system when she prepares salads and other foods; she just covers them with clear plastic films. Every record is made with the same high-fidelity standards the plastics will serve.
[Music]
These post-war decades are when plastic becomes a lifestyle. One way to buy Tupperware is a fun way at a Tupperware home party. Nowadays, everything can be made in plastic—turning a huge sheet of plastic into a boat in nine minutes flat.
Now the extras are optional, and there's no need to worry about running on the rocks. This new boat will take it.
By the end of the 60s, planet S that flag Neil Armstrong plants on the moon.
Nylon? Here's where plastic really goes through the roof. In 1950, the world produces 1.5 million tons of plastic—about 60 oil tankers. By the middle of the 1960s, production has rocketed to about 25 million tons—around a thousand oil tankers.
In the 1970s, it doubles, reaching about 50 million tons—nearly 2,000 oil tankers, roughly the same weight as the Empire State Building 140 times over.
[Music]
Coca-Cola has the taste you never get tired of—always refreshing. In 1975, when Coke and Pepsi decide it's time to replace their famous glass bottles with something a little cheaper, chemists come up with the answer: the PET soda bottle.
Nothing to do with cute animals; P-E-T is short for polyethylene terephthalate. It's strong enough to hold pressurized drinks, but more importantly, it can be recycled—used again and again to make more bottles cheaply.
It swiftly becomes the most popular form of packaging.
It isn't until the start of the 1980s that the world wakes up to the big problem with plastics. Our addiction to the stuff has created an environmental catastrophe.
How do we get rid of something that's virtually indestructible and yet so cheap? We just throw it away. Scientists estimate it takes around 450 years for one plastic bottle to break down naturally, but that's only a guess.
We don't actually know. Plastic doesn't degrade like other materials because it's man-made. It's from monomers of propylene, tethered by extremely strong carbon-carbon bonds. There is nothing like that in nature, so nature has no idea of how to break it down.
As a result, plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats we face.
[Music]
To confront the growing problem, towards the end of the 1980s, recycling begins to take off as manufacturers come up with better ways to dispose of the stuff. Those three recycling plastic arrows first appeared in 1988, and recycling changes how we look at plastic.
Just one plastic bottle saves enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for three hours. Nineteen PET plastic bottles stay in the fiber to make one big t-shirt.
Recycling one ton of plastic saves over a thousand gallons of gas and adds great jobs in the U.S. Over 700,000 people work in the recycling business.
But one of the biggest benefits of recycling? It takes 88% less energy to make plastics this way than using raw materials.
[Music]
But the truth is, recycling is a long way from working globally. Only 19.9% of all plastic thrown away is recycled. Still, plastic is an addiction we just cannot kick.
[Music]
As we enter the 1990s, our whole lives are shaped by plastic. Your home only exists thanks to plastic—the plumbing, the furniture, the lighting systems—all plastic.
It's the same for your TV, sound system, and kitchen gadgets. Your health also depends on plastic. Surgeons in modern operating theaters perform more effectively thanks to plastic.
Plastic artificial joints, pioneered in the 1960s, get even better in the 1990s as tougher polymers become available. By replacing their damaged articular cartilage with artificial materials such as metal or plastic, it reduces the pain.
Most medical research, whether creating life or defeating disease, couldn't happen without plastic. It literally saves our lives.
Every year, 600,000 people live longer thanks to pacemakers insulated with plastic. Class seat belts with plastic webbing cut the risk of being killed by 45%.
Each year, defibrillators delivering high-energy electric shocks to the heart save 30,000 lives in the UK alone. Globally, more than 10 million people benefit from 3D printed plastic hearing aids.
And worldwide, around 35 million diabetics are kept alive thanks to disposable plastic syringes.
[Music]
Plastics also protect our heroes. Since the 1980s, Nomex and Kevlar-treated clothing help firefighters and search and rescue teams save lives and stay alive themselves.
And since 1987, body armor made from Kevlar, one of the toughest plastics ever made, has saved the lives of 3,100 American police officers.
[Music]
It helps our sports heroes perform better.
[Music]
Check out this 2007 ski suit. It absorbs all the impact energy through the rate-sensitive intelligent molecules which are in the seams.
Plastic has an impact on everything we do, making our lives much better. But our failure to dispose of used plastic is killing the planet.
So how do we solve this dilemma? We're not just burying plastics in landfills, which is bad enough; we're swamping our oceans with it.
[Music]
Between 8 to 12 million tons of plastic are dumped into the sea each year—roughly a garbage truck every minute.
There are five massive areas in the oceans where tides and currents have created giant floating plastic garbage dumps. Phenologists call it the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is twice the size of Texas.
There might be 80 to 100,000 tons of plastic in this area alone.
[Music]
And it's not just ugly; it's deadly. Every year, plastic kills over a hundred thousand marine animals and a million seabirds. Some see the plastic as food and eat it; they're poisoned as toxins build up in their bodies.
So much plastic in the sea, they can't escape it.
[Music]
At the rate we're going, by 2050, there will be more plastics in our oceans than fish.
In an ominous development, even we are becoming plastic. Research in 2018 shows microplastics have been found in human waste.
How it gets there is unclear. It might be from packaging, clothes, furniture, or carpets. Whether it's medically dangerous is too soon to say, but plastic pollution is so widespread we might all be ingesting a credit card's worth of plastic a week.
Solutions are only coming. Companies like Adidas are moving towards using 100% recyclable plastic in their sneakers. A host of smaller firms are making handbags and clothes out of recycled plastics.
Even more radical solutions are in the pipeline. What about chemicals or enzymes that could actually eat plastic? The discovery of the enzyme is amazing—something that can eat plastic that normally takes 400 years to degrade.
The bacteria are starting to eat this in a matter of days.
Today, most plastics are still based on petroleum, which is why they're not biodegradable. So they don't break down in the Earth.
But perhaps there are different, friendlier ways plastics can be made. As Henry Ford first tried to show us in 1941, you can make plastics out of natural plant oils, and those plastics do decay back into the Earth.
[Music]
Recently, scientists have begun working along similar lines, experimenting with algae to develop a new type of biodegradable plastic. These microorganisms create a bioplastics polymer that's much less toxic and that degrades more quickly than synthetic plastics.
They're also looking at plants like switchgrass, oilseed, and sugar cane to produce natural polymers. These could all be part of future solutions.
[Music]
[Music]
It comes at a high price.
Our lives depend on it, but how we dispose of it threatens the planet. If we can wean ourselves off plastic that is not essential and use biodegradable versions where we can, we might just find a way to have the best of all worlds—or at least save this one.
[Music]
[Music]