Durban - The couch science council is going to make billions and, as a bonus, save the planet.
Our plan is outrageously simple, but it’s obvious through years of experience that no one has come up with it yet.
However, we’ll need a partner or two.
I’m eyeing one of those mega pharmaceutical companies who have absolutely killed it for the duration of the pandemic. They are so rolling in dosh, a few billion would be peanuts to save the Earth. And, in my opinion, they make one of the largest contributions to the pestilence that is plastic.
Every day I take drugs. Many of them, all in plastic things. The medication is a daily irritation because I know I’m contributing to the massive, growing and Earth-destroying mountains of this indestructible waste.
Having also had the misfortune of plenty ‒ and lengthy ‒ hospital stays, it has bugged me for years.
Every little jug of milk and big jug of water, every plate of biscuits, those jelly and custard desserts, muesli in a bowl, all covered with stretch plastic.
That’s before you get to the paraphernalia of medicine. Drips, tubes, drains, oxygen nose thingies and a host of other unmentionables, are “gift-wrapped” in plastic.
Of course, we don’t see what happens when it’s out of our sight. Perhaps it goes in a huge incinerator, but even the fires of Hades can’t obliterate it. There is always a remnant, ball or bulk. Where does that go?
As we found out at our cost during the big October 10 storm a few years ago, tiny pellets of plastic are almost impossible to eradicate. Remember the nurdles along our coastlines? Once in, plastic bits never really come out of our environment ‒ they break into smaller bits, get into our ocean-dwellers and, via Nature’s incredible food-chain, back into our bodies.
Of course, the medical field is just one of a megatron of plastic polluters, but given its centrality in our lives, it would be a great hub to start with. Oh, and two others: bloody cooldrink bottles and Nature’s nightmare, polystyrene “plates”.
The sterile imperative is obvious. But with all the powerhouse tech-slash-scientific brains in the chemistry world, surely someone could come up with an inexpensive alternative that would dissolve when done?
That creator would make more money than the combined GDPs of several First World countries. And why can’t it be done? After all, someone invented bloody plastic.
We’ve provided the plan ‒ all we need is a scientific superstar to jot down a formula. We’ll send bank details to them and the Earth. Future Earth-dwellers can thank us later.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday