3 ms·

This is the tragedy of plastic. It's so complicated and the benefits are so invisible that people can't weigh the pros and cons. Plastic is incredibly complex,

This is the tragedy of plastic. It's so complicated and the benefits are so invisible that people can't weigh the pros and cons. Plastic is incredibly complex, and the foundation of so many aspects of modern life that it's very difficult to take it all in.

shapefrog 3y ago
> Plastic is the foundation of so many aspects of modern life I genuinely can not think of a single product that only exists thanks to plastic.
- knowaveragejoe 3y ago
  I can think of plenty of products that would only be available to as many people as they are because of plastic. We should still do something about plastic waste, though.
- harimau777 3y ago
  I don't think it's so much that things wouldn't exist if plastic didn't exist. Rather it's that they would be so much different that they would almost be different products. There's tons of things like automobiles, firearms, and appliances that are dramatically lighter due to plastics. The non-plastic alternatives for clothing that protects from rain and cold are much more limited. Generally only wool and plastic clothing insulates while wet. In terms of actual rain jackets you'd have to go back to rubber, waxed cotton, or oilcloth.
  - kragen 3y ago
    rubber is a plastic, in the sense that it's a thermoset hydrocarbon polymer that's synthetically crosslinked and commonly shaped by molding, if we're talking about vulcanized natural latex. all the other kinds of rubber are even more obviously plastic: silicone, buna-n, polyurethane, etc.
- kragen 3y ago
  you can't think of a single product that only exists thanks to plastic? barring trivial examples like 'plastic bottles', 'synthetic fibers', and 'plastic pipes', which are just plastic versions of products that could be produced otherwise, i can think of a few: · condoms that prevent disease (sheepskin condoms are okay as contraceptives but are not considered safe against hiv) · transparent flexible medical feeding tubes · disposable scalpels · disposable pipette tips, crucial for biology work · catheters (one company does make them from a bioplastic but it's still a plastic) · i was going to say 'printed circuit boards' but it turns out that some of them are made out of sapphire instead. so i guess i'm limited to 'impact-resistant printed circuit boards' · communications satellites (they'd've weighed too much to launch without much larger rockets, and they'd also break during launch) · cell phones · playground slides that don't cause burns when it's sunny · spray foam insulation · permanent markers (the ink is a plastic) · bulletproof vests (plastics are the only materials with the necessary combination of strength and lightness) · landfill liners · magnetic tape · photographic film, as opposed to glass plates, and therefore pocket cameras and motion pictures · pneumatic tires, and therefore bicycles and automobiles that can go faster than a walking pace · insulating panels for houses · garbage bags · breast implants · adhesive tapes, including duct tape, scotch tape, packing tape, and masking tape (pressure-sensitive adhesives are plastics) · band-aids · lcds (the liquid crystals are a plastic, just one that's molten at room temperature; the polarizing filters are also a plastic, a solid one, although conceivably you could find a way to use wollaston prisms for this instead) · ion-selective electrolysis membranes (nafion, etc.) · phonograph records. if you're unwilling to consider shellac a 'plastic', even though it's a moldable thermoplastic organic polymer, this can be restricted to 33rpm and 45rpm phonograph records · compact discs, probably. although you could surely micro-etch a surface to store digital data without plastic, the stamping process crucially depends on plastic's ability to mold to submicron precision as a way to mass-produce the resulting shape · hologram stickers, similarly · baby bottles. the nipples are plastic (rubber, a plastic, is the only natural material that will work) and if you make the bottle itself out of glass, the baby will break it · flexible electrical wires that don't short out if they get wet, I think. you can't insulate flexible wires with glass or porcelain. certainly insulating wires with cloth (silk for small wires) was commonplace in the early 20th century, and although you can get wires insulated with an layer of ceramic so thin it's flexible, i don't think it's flexible enough or abrasion-resistant enough for household use those are things you can't make at all without plastics. in most other cases, you could make do: by molding things out of beeswax or glass, stamping them out of steel, carving them out of wood, machining them out of brass or mykroy/mycalex (if you don't consider that a 'plastic'), molding them out of plaster, using decay-prone natural fibers instead of stable plastic ones, painting cotton cloth with linseed oil, oxidatively cross-linking linseed oil or urushi as a binder for other uses, sintering sapphire, or bolting together pieces of porcelain or granite that had been ground to shape that would work for clothing, camping, rock climbing, sailing, electronic components, paints, electrical equipment, automobiles, and most industrial processes. but not for the bullet list above however, even in those cases, the resulting products would in most cases be orders of magnitude more expensive, so the aspect of modern life that would be missing would be that non-wealthy people have access to them. they would also be much shorter-lived in most cases because they would rot and break more easily
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  That's what I'm talking about :) There are a bunch of answers to your question the way you asked it (eg electrical components, or chemical processes that can only be contained in certain polymers) but let's skip them. The scale of human society requires -a lot of stuff-, and plastics make that possible. Building materials, clothing, tools, storage, etc. It costs an order of magnitude more to manufacture something out of wood or metal or glass than to make it out of plastic. And then the thing would often be more fragile or cumbersome. Plastics do such a good job here that we get caught up in the problems their overabundance creates. But without them, costs of living globally would be drastically higher and way more people would be suffering from dire want.
  - kragen 3y ago
    i'm interested to hear which electrical components and chemical processes you're thinking of?

shapefrog 3y ago

> Plastic is the foundation of so many aspects of modern life I genuinely can not think of a single product that only exists thanks to plastic.

knowaveragejoe 3y ago
I can think of plenty of products that would only be available to as many people as they are because of plastic. We should still do something about plastic waste, though.
harimau777 3y ago
I don't think it's so much that things wouldn't exist if plastic didn't exist. Rather it's that they would be so much different that they would almost be different products. There's tons of things like automobiles, firearms, and appliances that are dramatically lighter due to plastics. The non-plastic alternatives for clothing that protects from rain and cold are much more limited. Generally only wool and plastic clothing insulates while wet. In terms of actual rain jackets you'd have to go back to rubber, waxed cotton, or oilcloth.
- kragen 3y ago
  rubber is a plastic, in the sense that it's a thermoset hydrocarbon polymer that's synthetically crosslinked and commonly shaped by molding, if we're talking about vulcanized natural latex. all the other kinds of rubber are even more obviously plastic: silicone, buna-n, polyurethane, etc.
kragen 3y ago
you can't think of a single product that only exists thanks to plastic? barring trivial examples like 'plastic bottles', 'synthetic fibers', and 'plastic pipes', which are just plastic versions of products that could be produced otherwise, i can think of a few: · condoms that prevent disease (sheepskin condoms are okay as contraceptives but are not considered safe against hiv) · transparent flexible medical feeding tubes · disposable scalpels · disposable pipette tips, crucial for biology work · catheters (one company does make them from a bioplastic but it's still a plastic) · i was going to say 'printed circuit boards' but it turns out that some of them are made out of sapphire instead. so i guess i'm limited to 'impact-resistant printed circuit boards' · communications satellites (they'd've weighed too much to launch without much larger rockets, and they'd also break during launch) · cell phones · playground slides that don't cause burns when it's sunny · spray foam insulation · permanent markers (the ink is a plastic) · bulletproof vests (plastics are the only materials with the necessary combination of strength and lightness) · landfill liners · magnetic tape · photographic film, as opposed to glass plates, and therefore pocket cameras and motion pictures · pneumatic tires, and therefore bicycles and automobiles that can go faster than a walking pace · insulating panels for houses · garbage bags · breast implants · adhesive tapes, including duct tape, scotch tape, packing tape, and masking tape (pressure-sensitive adhesives are plastics) · band-aids · lcds (the liquid crystals are a plastic, just one that's molten at room temperature; the polarizing filters are also a plastic, a solid one, although conceivably you could find a way to use wollaston prisms for this instead) · ion-selective electrolysis membranes (nafion, etc.) · phonograph records. if you're unwilling to consider shellac a 'plastic', even though it's a moldable thermoplastic organic polymer, this can be restricted to 33rpm and 45rpm phonograph records · compact discs, probably. although you could surely micro-etch a surface to store digital data without plastic, the stamping process crucially depends on plastic's ability to mold to submicron precision as a way to mass-produce the resulting shape · hologram stickers, similarly · baby bottles. the nipples are plastic (rubber, a plastic, is the only natural material that will work) and if you make the bottle itself out of glass, the baby will break it · flexible electrical wires that don't short out if they get wet, I think. you can't insulate flexible wires with glass or porcelain. certainly insulating wires with cloth (silk for small wires) was commonplace in the early 20th century, and although you can get wires insulated with an layer of ceramic so thin it's flexible, i don't think it's flexible enough or abrasion-resistant enough for household use those are things you can't make at all without plastics. in most other cases, you could make do: by molding things out of beeswax or glass, stamping them out of steel, carving them out of wood, machining them out of brass or mykroy/mycalex (if you don't consider that a 'plastic'), molding them out of plaster, using decay-prone natural fibers instead of stable plastic ones, painting cotton cloth with linseed oil, oxidatively cross-linking linseed oil or urushi as a binder for other uses, sintering sapphire, or bolting together pieces of porcelain or granite that had been ground to shape that would work for clothing, camping, rock climbing, sailing, electronic components, paints, electrical equipment, automobiles, and most industrial processes. but not for the bullet list above however, even in those cases, the resulting products would in most cases be orders of magnitude more expensive, so the aspect of modern life that would be missing would be that non-wealthy people have access to them. they would also be much shorter-lived in most cases because they would rot and break more easily
droopyEyelids 3y ago
That's what I'm talking about :) There are a bunch of answers to your question the way you asked it (eg electrical components, or chemical processes that can only be contained in certain polymers) but let's skip them. The scale of human society requires -a lot of stuff-, and plastics make that possible. Building materials, clothing, tools, storage, etc. It costs an order of magnitude more to manufacture something out of wood or metal or glass than to make it out of plastic. And then the thing would often be more fragile or cumbersome. Plastics do such a good job here that we get caught up in the problems their overabundance creates. But without them, costs of living globally would be drastically higher and way more people would be suffering from dire want.
- kragen 3y ago
  i'm interested to hear which electrical components and chemical processes you're thinking of?