Plastics are forever

I agree with statement that the public should not blindly follow the state government's call to cut down on the usage of plastic bags (see theStar online). Who in his right mind would disagree with such an advice? The question for you is, do you agree with his argument? Put it another way, is HIS eyes open?

The basic premise of the politician (an engineer to boot) who made that call to open our eyes is that : (a) plastic lasts forever; (b) we need to reclaim land so that we can build houses for the people; and (c) there's no better way than to use our thrash for reclamation. Put the three together and the logic is that we should use and throw away more plastic bags so that we can create more land to build more houses for the people.

The first premise is true, to a large extent. Nobody knows how long plastic will last. Perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Nobody knows. Certainly WE will never know, because none of us will live that long.

But it is also a false premise because even though the plastics will not biodegrade (perhaps in a thousand years, some microorganism will evolve to eat plastic polymers), it will breakdown into microscopic particles which the human eye cannot see (see the irony?). And researchers have found that these microscopic plastic particles have ended up in the blood stream of marine animals (see Alan Weisman, "The World Without Us"). The question in the context of land reclamation is of course, if the plastic bags and other plastic containers break down, how will it affect the stability of the the land? Yes, I know about the 100 year old newspaper dug up from a landfill in the UK often cited as evidence that stuff don't degrade in landfills because there is no air and no light. And of course, you can argue that the apartments or houses built on the reclaimed land probably won't last that long anyway. So, no problem you say, even if the plastic bags breakdown. Ah, and don't forget, you don't construct buildings without a solid foundation of piles. Yah, OK, stability is not a major issue here.

Now, the second premise that we need more land, and the land should come from reclamation is much harder to comprehend. Particularly in Penang. Do we not have enough houses yet?  Just look around. Seems to me we should examine the housing stock first before we jump to that conclusion. Yes, I agree, we are building too many super-condos priced at a million or more that the ordinary folks cannot afford. But why do we need to build affordable housing on reclaimed land? Because it is cheaper?

Don't forget that landfills are also hazardous because of the gases, especially methane, generated from decomposition of organic matter. It's dangerous (could explode) and a health hazard.

Now imagine this. Imagine Kuala Lumpur, in the middle of nowhere. Alright, far away from the sea then. See the logic of that argument starting to fall apart. "Hey, people in KL. Use more plastic bags so that we can reclaim land off the coast of Port Klang or Port Dickson to build house for the people of KL." Try that on Ipoh. Or some other inland area.

A more fundamental question is, if plastic bags can be recycled, why throw them into a landfill?

The fact is that you can only recycle plastic a certain number of times. After that it becomes costly and difficult. Everytime you recycle plastic, you actually have to add new plastic to the batch. So, it is not an endless loop. That means you do not maintain a steady level of use of resources. Put it another way, we have to continuously add new resources into the recycling process.

What does that tell us? Throwing plastic bags goes against the grain of sustainable development.

What we want is less thrash so that we reduce our consumption of Earth's precious resources. And with less thrash, we don't need to spend so much money on landfills and thrash collection, and residents won't find landfills in their backyard.

Our goal should be less thrash for a sustainable future.