Critical Focus | Come Back Plastic, All is Forgiven
THE MICROSCOPE
2019, Volume 67:1, pp. 31–42
DOI
https://doi.org/10.59082/WUHX3780
AUTHOR
Brian J. Ford
EXCERPT
You read the papers, and so do I. They teach us all about the pernicious polymers that are decimating the globe. Our future world, they insist, must be free from the plastic menace. It isn’t just drinking straws, but shopping bags and everything else made from polymers — they must all go. Plastic is suffocating the oceans and polluting the planet. Plastic is bad, and everyone needs to understand that. This is a blanket belief, reminiscent of “four legs good, two legs bad” quoted by Snowball the pig in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and, like all such generalizations, it is hopelessly wrong. Nobody can survive in today’s civilized society without plastics. Many were pioneered by microbiologists, and most of the main groups were discovered by accident. They are not “bad” at all — plastic is of paramount importance. The plastics industry is a mainstay of the modern world and their products are provided because customers prefer them. It is people who cause pollution.
