This article discusses the impact of plastics on modern civilization, explaining their economic and physical properties and their contribution to the formation of a culture of mass production and consumption. It also highlights the environmental damage that plastic use has caused and suggests ways forward.

Materials and human civilization

From prehistoric times to the present day, civilization has made remarkable progress. Human civilization is a combination of cultural, environmental, and technological factors. There is no single factor that is more important than any other, and today’s civilizations are the result of a combination of many different factors. However, in this article, we’re going to focus on technology in particular.
Humans’ dominant position on the planet is deeply linked to our bipedalism. The ability to walk on two feet freed up our hands to develop and utilize tools, which, over time, allowed us to rise to the top of the food chain. If we define the concept of a tool as “any man-made object that we use to make a living,” we can see that it is the tools that humans have used that best illustrate the development of human civilization. All tools require materials with properties suitable for their purpose, and the development of new materials leads to the development of new tools. Therefore, the tools we have developed are linked to the materials we have discovered and developed. The history of the development of human civilization is the history of the materials we have developed.

The Impact of Plastics – A World Without Plastics

Imagine the following situation All clothes are made of 100% natural fibers such as cotton, burlap, etc. All sodas and bottled water sold in convenience stores come in glass bottles and cans. Most produce and processed foods like sweets and bread are sold in paper bags. Children’s toys are mostly made of wood and iron; Lego blocks don’t exist. Where insulation is required in electronics, it is usually glass or wood, which is not very durable. Wires are sheathed in natural rubber, which is difficult to process and expensive.
This is just an arbitrary imagination of a world without plastic. According to the definition of the International Organization for Standardization, ISO, plastic is “a material, mainly polymeric, that is given shape by flow somewhere in the process of forming the final product. Thus, the synthetic fibers that make up the majority of our clothing today are plastic. Plastic bottles, plastic packaging for processed foods, Lego blocks, substrates and insulators in electronics, and the sheathing of wires all fall into this category. Even a cursory examination of the above examples shows that modern civilization would be inconvenient without plastic. Nowadays, you can’t go anywhere in civilized society without finding something made of plastic, and it’s already playing a role in every aspect of our lives. One indicator of this is annual plastic consumption. In 1940, global plastic consumption was nearly zero, but by 2007, it had reached 260 billion kilograms. The average American uses more than 140 kilograms of plastic per year. This explosive growth in the plastics industry is due to several unique properties of plastics.

Properties of plastics

Some of the most important properties of plastics are economical. Plastic molecules are made up of a combination of monomers that form a kind of block. The monomers used are by-products of the petroleum industry and are therefore available at low prices. Because the raw materials are cheap, plastics have a low unit cost. And because it’s so moldable, it costs less to make a product than other materials. The second is the excellent physical properties of plastics. Plastics are generally lightweight but have considerable strength, making them impact-resistant, corrosion-resistant, and chemical-resistant. They also have excellent electrical insulation, heat and cold resistance, and moisture and water resistance. The third is the diversity of plastic types. The monomers that make up a plastic molecule are very diverse, so the number of theoretically possible plastics is countless, and each has its own unique properties. Plastics are economical, durable, and versatile. These properties of plastics have impacted the cultural and environmental spheres of modern civilization.

Plastics’ impact on culture – the culture of consumption

Plastics are economical, which is directly related to the mass production of goods. Before plastics, consumption was a luxury. Hair combs were made of cow horns or animal bones, billiard balls were made of ivory, and so on. Many of the things we take for granted today were considered luxuries back then. This had to do with the scarcity of the materials themselves, but also with the way they were made. Items that are made by hand, one by one, are inevitably much more luxurious than those that are mass-produced in factories. Consumption, which was a symbol of the upper class before the advent of plastics, has become a culture in all walks of life with the spread of plastics. People have become consumers, and it has become natural to buy, consume, and throw things away with ease.
Alongside this is the rise of disposables. The economics of plastics have changed our mindset by allowing us to use and throw away objects that we would normally use multiple times every day. With less need to be stingy, consumption has become more frequent and simple, and we have come to define ourselves as consumers. In the modern world, consumption is not just limited to material things. Modern consumers consume everything from books, TV shows, movies, music, webcomics, and more. Consumption, which has already become a culture in modern civilization, is fundamentally a phenomenon that can be seen as a result of a thickened consumer base. This is deeply connected to the rise of plastics, which made it possible to mass produce goods.

The impact of plastics on the environment – pollution

One of the properties of plastics is their durability. It’s not just its strength, but also its corrosion resistance, which means that it can be used for a long time and still maintain its quality. However, this can also be a big problem from the opposite point of view. It’s estimated that the material recycling rate of plastics is around 30%, and the remaining 70% of plastic waste is landfilled or left to decay over time, causing environmental pollution. As a solution to this problem, eco-friendly plastics such as biodegradable plastics are being researched. On the one hand, projects are underway to collect plastic waste floating in the ocean, and policies are encouraging the separation and recycling of plastics. The rise of plastics and the popularization of their consumption has led to an annual plastic consumption of 260 billion kilograms. The resulting environmental pollution problems directly and indirectly affect modern civilization. It is estimated that 700 million kilograms of plastic end up in the ocean every year, posing a serious threat to the ecosystems of marine life, including sea birds. This ecosystem disruption is important because in the long run, it could be a big problem for us as well. Modern civilization has come to incorporate the topic of environmental pollution as a way of moving forward.

Conclusion – Plastics and modern civilization

In economic terms, there is no substitute for plastic bottles as packaging for bottled water. Due to the superior properties of synthetic fibers, most clothes today contain a high percentage of synthetic fibers, which are also difficult to replace with other materials. Plastics are already widespread and present in our society with a clear presence, and their emergence has brought human civilization to where it is today. The mass production of goods through the use of plastic has given everyone the opportunity to become a consumer. This has partially reduced the gap between classes, and it has also influenced the way people behave. On the other hand, the explosive use of plastics has created the problem of environmental pollution. This has led us to ask how we can develop in a way that protects the environment. In this way, we can see that the cultural and environmental changes that have occurred with the development of plastics have had a direct impact on human civilization. This is not a statement that is specific to plastics. The development of materials always affects the development of human civilization, and the impact is wider and deeper than we can imagine.