Close your eyes and imagine a world in which we had decided to live without plastics. What comes to your mind? Beaches and seas with less waste? Less polluted oceans? Cities without plastic on the ground? Do you think it would be perfect? Would humanity, finally, have managed to overcome one of its greatest challenges and move towards a more sustainable planet?
The truth is that living without plastics would not be the ecological dream that many imagine, but rather a real challenge for modern life. The lack of this material would affect a multitude of sectors such as technology, health, food, construction or transportation, where plastic is essential to guarantee complete safety, efficiency and progress.
Technology: without plastic, innovation stops
On a cold winter morning, homes in this plastic-free world would for the first time face an immediate problem: the inability to maintain a comfortable temperature. And the thing is that, in this new reality, the modern insulation and piping system that you have would no longer be made up of a few pieces of this material that protected you from low temperatures.
Likewise, technology would not be spared from the consequences either. In a world without plastics, electronic devices such as mobile phones would also be severely affected. The absence of adequate insulating materials in wireless chargers and internal components would cause constant electrical and thermal failures in all devices, thus preventing their correct operation. The wiring networks that facilitate telecommunications from anywhere in the world would not be the same either. This would mean the loss of connectivity for millions of users like you and would hinder both the way of working we know today, and much of our leisure.
Transport: more emissions, less efficiency
Mobility in this new world (without plastics) would also suffer a significant setback. The use of this material in key parts of buses, trains and airplanes was crucial to make them lighter and for efficient operation. Cars would weigh more as they lack plastic in their design, which would translate into greater energy consumption and, therefore, greater pollution.
Logistical complications would not only be limited to land transportation; From the first day of living in this dystopian world, the airline sector would be completely paralyzed since the prohibition of the use of plastics in essential components such as, for example, electrical systems or fuel tanks would block its operation, thus immediately affecting mobility and the global economy.
Plastic, key in health and food
The abrupt elimination of plastic would immediately impact the universal healthcare system. Hospitals would remain collapsed since, without plastics for masks, catheters, syringes, gloves, IV bags or respirators, healthcare would regress several decades in a matter of days. Furthermore, medicines and vaccines would have their cold chain interrupted in an unlimited manner, since the absence of plastic in insulated packaging would make it impossible to maintain the ideal temperatures for the correct conservation of the products.
A problem that would also extend to supermarkets whose shelves would be increasingly empty and not because there was a lack of food, but because there would no longer be a safe way to package it. By not having plastic containers that would extend their useful life and guarantee correct condition and quality, tons and tons of perishable food would be lost.
Are we eliminating plastics based on data or was it all greenwashing?
According to the latest data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), collected in the Environmental Accounts Report of the total waste that the Spanish economy generated in 2021 (115.4 million tons), only 953,800 correspond to plastic remains; This therefore represents 0.8% of the total.
If we compare it with the impact generated by the rest of the waste, the difference turns out to be quite significant. In the lead are minerals, which account for 40.8% of the total, followed by mixed waste (34.6% of the total), animals and vegetables (8.3% of the total), metal waste (5.2% of the total), paper and cardboard (3.4%), chemicals (2.2% of the total), discarded equipment (1.45%), glass (1.11%) and finally, wood (0.92%).
The data speaks for itself. Living in a world in which plastics had no place would not solve the existing problem with waste generation; rather, some waste would be exchanged for another.
And now open your eyes. Having imagined, dreamed and lived for a moment in this dystopian world, do you really think it would be more sustainable? Wouldn’t it be better not to judge any material based on myths, but on life cycle analysis data? True sustainability is not about completely eradicating a material, but about learning to reuse, recycle and manage it correctly. Only in this way can we protect beaches, seas and oceans, cities or towns and build a more conscious and balanced future.