Bioplastics – always a good thing?

Plastic bottles

Saskia (Y13) questions whether bioplastics have been misbranded as an eco-friendly material and discusses factors we all should consider as consumers.

In the student leadership team, we have been thinking a lot about connections – within the school, within ourselves, and connections with the wider world. You will be hearing a lot more about the environment this year from Flora, our Environment Rep, but as I have been investigating whether the UK should be investing in bioplastics for my EPQ, I thought I would write about a few of my findings and hopefully encourage all of us to think more about the impact we are having on our world, and how we can work together to connect more with the environment.

Plastic underwater With its many uses – from industrial to home use, packaging, toys and clothes, its durability, light weight and low cost – plastics make economic sense and are in many ways ideal for 21st century living. But we are now all much more aware of the time – up to 1000 years – that plastics take to break down, when put into landfill. An estimated 3 million tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean each year. Alongside the life span factor, the raw material for traditional plastics – commonly from non-renewable sources such as oil – bring questions of sustainability. Acting on this, companies have looked for biomass (wheat, corn, sugar cane, sugar beet, potatoes and other plants) to turn into plastics. Thus, bioplastics have been created. A positive development, we might all agree.

However, straightaway we have to question the energy needed to transport biomass to a manufacturing plant to make bioplastics. We must then consider the energy needed to create them – the energy used in production for any type of plastic is high. Most importantly for the consumer, and what I want to focus on here, is the question of the disposal of bioplastics. It is a misconception to believe that bioplastics are better for the environment than petroleum plastics after life. Bioplastics are not necessarily biodegradable even though they are made from biomass materials. Bioplastics can be made to decompose; however, this is only common in products that have a short life. I am very keen to spread this message!

The Guardian[1] started some months ago wrapping their Saturday magazine supplement in corn starch wrapping. The corn starch wrapping can go into compost bins and decompose – no problems there. However, the new Coca Cola Plantbottle[2] cannot decompose. A plastic bottle, even made from biomass, will on average take 450 years to break down.

Plantbottle What CocaCola want you to do is to recycle your PlantBottle in the correct facility. In keeping the bioplastic of the bottles in use, they are promoting the circular economy that is becoming much more of a consideration for anyone in the manufacturing process. The problem, of course, is the human factor: how can you ensure the correct separation of materials to recycle efficiently and without contamination? If the separation does not work, one type of plastic can easily be mixed into another type and thus contaminate a batch of recycled product. This batch is then not able to be used in certain situations or at all due to the change in properties.

This is just a snapshot of some of the findings from my research. I believe bioplastics are a good alternative to the petrochemical plastics that we have used for so long. I say this with caution though because as I hope I have demonstrated, there are still many downsides to the materials. However, I believe that as our technology improves the impact that bioplastics have will decrease. It is key that we make these changes if bioplastics are ever going to be sustainable especially as the world is developing rapidly.

By focusing on education and minimising the impact humans are having on the environment we will ensure that there is a future for younger generations. It will involve considerable investment; we would need to change the materials we use, spend money clearing up plastic pollution and grow to educate an awareness of the afterlife of all types of plastics, including bioplastics. My main belief is that we need to change the way we use materials. It is just not feasible to continue increasing the amount of plastic packaging that the world is using and thus the most ideal situation is to dramatically decrease the amount of packaging and our dependence on plastics overall. I hope I have inspired you to think; if you have ideas of how we can do this within our WHS community, do let the SLT know.

 


References: 

[1] Natasha Hitti, [website], 2019, https://www.dezeen.com/2019/01/14/guardian-biodegradable-wrapping-design/

[2] CocaColaCo, [website], 2015, https://www.coca-colacompany.com/videos/introducing-plant-bottle-ytaevvjxqwaz8

 

An environmental education: more than ‘saving the world’?

Globe

Nicola Higgs, Head of Geography, investigates the importance of an environmental education and challenges us to think about the concept in a more complex way.

Environmental education is not simply about ‘saving the whale’ or indeed ‘saving the world’. It is equally about the development of an appreciation of the wonders and beauty of the world, and a sense of wanting to save it – in short, the development of ecological thinking or of an environmental ethic (Palmer, 1998, p. 267).

Environmental education as described by Joy Palmer above is a relatively young, but increasingly significant, area of study. The importance of developing means to live more sustainably, conserving natural resources, and preserving the Earth for its future inhabitants are at the heart of environmental education. However, it does not always hold the priority in education systems that this urgency advocates, and it seems to constantly be battling for its position against the “intricacies and demands of education in general rather than be a core element of it” (Palmer, 1998, p. ix).

The 1968 UNESCO Conference called for all education systems at all levels to provide space and resources in the curriculum to learn about the environment and to create a global awareness of environmental problems. The definition of environmental education was agreed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)/UNESCO in 1970:

…the process of recognising values and clarifying concepts in order to develop skills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate the inter-relatedness among man, his culture, his biophysical surroundings. Environmental education also entails practice in decision-making and self-formulation of a code of behaviour about issues concerning environmental quality (IUCN, 1970).

And in 1975 the UN founded the International Environmental Education Programme, which had 3 clear objectives:

  1. Foster clear awareness of and concern about economic, social, political, and ecological inter-dependence in urban and rural areas
  2. Provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and skills needed to protect and improve the environment
  3. Create new patterns of behaviour of individual, groups and society as a whole towards the environment

This strong international focus on environmental issues and environmental education reflected increasing public interest on the environment. Fast-forward to 2018 and environmental education has, in many ways, been deprioritised within national and international school curriculums across the world, due to competing tensions between the significance of the environment compared to economic and social development (Tippins, Mueller, van Eijck, & Adams, 2010).

The folly in this is that in order that people and societies can continue to function and develop we must look to find balance in the human-environment relationship. As educators we have a duty to ensure that students are equipped to handle the 21st century world which they will inherit. Understanding the way in which space-place-environment operates as a conceptual and procedural nexus, each inseparable from the other, will be crucial in achieving the sustainable development ideal. Teaching ‘about the environment’ is no longer enough, teaching ‘for sustainability’ has the potential to engage and reinforce the tools with which our girls will enter the world and lead the change we need to see (Corney & Middleton, 1996).

An approach that we have adopted in the Geography Department at Wimbledon High School is to ensure schemes of learning at all key stages build on the concept of sustainable development, that is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland Report, 1987). We expose our students to a variety of real-world scenarios in which they could have an impact in the future.

For example, Year 8 have recently debated the construction of a wind energy farm having first designed and built a prototype wind turbine in the STEAM room, Year 9 will evaluate options for development of the low-income country Zambia in the face of an increasingly interconnected world. Year 10 and 11 explore the tensions between our quickly urbanising global population and the growing size of ecological footprints beyond the boundary of the city, whilst proposing sustainable solutions to issues of water stress and water scarcity in the UK, which, as Londoners, will be critically important to them.

As a Geographer I feel a sense of duty to ensure that my students have as full an appreciation and understanding of environmental issues as I am able to help them discover. The complexity of environmental problems, opinions and solutions is vast, and our programmes of education at WHS aim to inform, empower and inspire:

Our task as environmental educators in the 21st century is to recognise this complexity of experience, and to assist the overall process – by striving to implement programmes of education that inform our students about the complexities of the environment in which they are growing up; empower them to address environment and development issues in their own lives; and provide them with opportunities to be inspired by the joys, wonder and mysteries of the natural world and human achievement (Palmer, 1998, p. 277).

Environmental education is vital for our future, it could well be the most important thing we teach our young people. Subjects and disciplines change and evolve, as societies and politics and belief systems and ideologies change and evolve, and priorities for people and countries change.  The future belongs to these young people; they have a right to be able to fully engage in it, and above all to be well informed about it.

Follow @Geography_WHS on Twitter.

References and further reading:

Corney, G., & Middleton, N. (1996). Teaching environmental issues in schools and higher education. In E. Rawling & R. Daugherty (Eds.), Geography into the twenty-first century (pp. 323–338). Chichester: Wiley.

Palmer, J. A. (1998). Environmental education in the 21st century: theory, practice, progress and promise. London: Routledge.

Tippins, D. J., Mueller, M. P., van Eijck, M., & Adams, J. D. (Eds.). (2010). Cultural studies and Environmentalism. The Confluence of EcoJustic, Place-based (Science) Education, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems. New York: Springer.

Ted Talk – ‘Let the Environment Guide our Development (Johan Rockstrom) https://www.ted.com/talks/johan_rockstrom_let_the_environment_guide_our_development