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Sabine Hossenfelder: We're Lying to Ourselves about Plastic


I admire those scientists -- I mean actual credentialed working scientists -- who deign to spend a lot of time explaining science to layfolks like me.

They are a differentiated bunch. Examples that come to mind are: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krauss, Michael Polanyi, and -- my personal favorite -- Sabine Hossenfelder.  This must be roughly the tenth time she has inspired a post in this humble blog. 

Let me introduce her credentials. Hossenfelder has a Ph.D. from Goethe University Frankfurt, for which she wrote a thesis on "Black Hole Relics in Large Extra Dimensions."  That will give a flavor of such of her work as is aimed at peers. 

She is also a fellow blogger.

In a recent post on one of those blogs she argues that humans have been lying to ourselves about plastic. She thinks that the stuff is building up and may well prove disastrous for us.  To this point she cites the OECD, which says that the use of plastics doubled globally in the period 2000 to 2019. 

But, she also says, the plastics industry has promoted a happy-face "recycling myth" for decades, and we have all bought into it. The happy myth is that recycling creates value so that without much effort we can all enjoy a harmony of interest. 

The truth is that recycling, when we are "doing it well," she says, "is expensive and makes no financial sense." 

Relatedly, back in the 1970s the plastics industry was promoting waste-to-energy power plants. The idea was that plastic can be burnt, and energy generated in the process. In fact, as Sabine says, that CAN be done, but it is a "messy, dirty, and smelly business." People didn't like it.  That experiment soon came to an end due to public pressure and the recycling myth is a largely make-believe effort to do without waste-to-energy. 

This is what we are lying to ourselves about, both consumers and producers. There is a lot of plastic on our planet, a lot more is coming, most of it will neither be recycled properly NOR incinerated. So ... we have yet to create a solution. Hossenfelder concludes that in time we will see only a simple choice: burn plastic or learn to eat it. Incineration will regain its lost appeal. 

It all makes for a very sobering video.

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/03/we-need-to-stop-lying-about-plastic-to.html    


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