For at least 100 years, innovators and scientists have wrestled with how to make that modern miracle material—plastic—better, stronger and more durable. Finding new applications for all these materials was the next big challenge, as plastic went from the Hula Hoop (a way to get rid of excess PE), drinking glasses and the Frisbee to automotive exterior parts and engine components. Along the way, plastics became ubiquitous.

Now it seems that innovators and scientists are struggling with how to get rid of those same polymer materials that just won’t go away. As I listened to various presentations at SustPack 2017 in Scottsdale, AZ, this week, I was in awe of the amount of time and money that is being put into trying to make plastic look like something other than what it is, or to make it disappear altogether in some magical, mystical way—“like it never even happened” (if I may steal the tag line from the ServePro TV commercial).

There was also much talk about the “problem” of plastics. We all know that plastics definitely has a PR—as well as a PC—problem, as consumers buy into the hype of the dangers of plastics and how plastics are turning the world into a garbage dump.

Jennifer Idol from The Underwater Designer spoke of her experience in cleaning up a lake of the never-ending supply of various plastic trash near her home in Texas. She designs products in which the first question she asks herself is, “does it need to exist?” She then advised the audience to “choose alternative materials” because “plastic never goes away.”

Idol also noted that “recycling [of plastics] is not the answer because it doesn’t solve the problem of reducing the need for plastics. . . . Choose better materials; ones we can be proud of,” she concluded.

Idol didn’t say what constitutes a “better” material that we can be “proud” of and on what basis that judgment might be made other than, I suppose, it’s not plastic.        

Even some of the various packaging industry/trade organizations don’t seem to be helping plastics with its identity problem. Many of them promise solutions to the “problem” of plastics rather than offering a defense of the many benefits of plastics or noting the problems polymer materials have solved over the past half-century.

Take composting trade groups, for example. For those organizations, the only good plastic is a biodegradable or compostable one. We were reminded, however, by a member of the audience, that a biodegradable material isn’t necessarily compostable. But when you’re a hammer, everything is a nail.

Susan Thoman, Principle and Managing Director of the Compost Manufacturing Alliance (CMA), spoke about the group’s goal of zero waste. That initiative includes composting food waste with compostable containers, single-use service ware and cups, specific to the Seattle, WA, area. Seattle was the first municipality to pass a law (in 2010) that all fast-food restaurants, food courts and other food service businesses use only service ware that is compostable or recyclable. Taco Time in Seattle went to the one-bin system, where compostable plates and other service ware go