War against plastics

2019/12/17 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Materialak
• Ingurumena

We have a war against plastic. Slogan: “the plastic is bad.” That is not true. If you are alive it is thanks to plastic. Do you see? I can also make slogans. “You’re alive thanks to plastics.” That is not true either, but like the previous ideas, it represents a part of reality and loses many things on the way.

I will give an example: bags to keep blood in a hospital. The blood we donate is stored in PVC, plastic bags. By the way, the material of the old discs is also PVC, but we call it vinyl, which gives it prestige, but it is PVC, a plastic.

And the question is: Can PVC be replaced by another material for making blood bags? PVC very well withstands heat during the process of sterilization of the blood; when the blood is frozen to store it does not lose flexibility; it is transparent, weighs little and the bags can be welded by heating only a certain area of the bag. The only problem if you have a problem is plastic. So, if we have to replace plastic, what other material do we choose? The only thing that happens to me is glass, glass. It does not meet all the characteristics of PVC, but it does many points. But do you imagine that in the hospitals you will have to keep blood in glass containers? I only see problems. How much blood would be lost by breaking glass containers? No, it doesn't seem like a very good solution.

With this I am saying that plastic is good? Well, no. That would also be a slogan. The plastic poses some problems. They are, moreover, serious from the environmental point of view, and it must be addressed seriously. We have a serious problem at sea, for example. But from there to say that plastic is bad, there is a lot of way.

The plastic is not bad. Yes, we have to repair the damage it produces and correct a way to control plastics. And that work is a high level science, not resolved with slogans.