A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COLLEGE OF ART IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MASTERS OF FINE ARTS DEGREE Program: Master of Arts in Design Systems Growing Plastic Can kelp disrupt the petrochemical supply chain? Jake Crahan April 29, 2021 Approval Signature Page Approved By MK Guth Herman D'Hooge C a n k e l p disrupt t h e p e t r ochemical s u p p l y c hain? By: Jake Crahan Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Case Study Analysis Envisioned Future Conclusion Bibliography Glossary Abstract Plastic is pervasive. It is a cheap and extremely versatile material, and for 100 years plastic has been used for everything from electronic components to single-use bags. The problem is that the vast majority of plastic still exists in the same form in which it was initially manufactured. What’s worse is that 40 percent of this plastic is packaging material designed to be used only once. The petrochemical industry has been ruthless in their installation of plastic into our lives, manufacturing the widely held notion that plastic could be sustainable if only we all recycled, all while plastic production and profits increased exponentially. So how do we create a sustainable, cheap, and versatile material with which to replace petrochemical plastic? There are countless viable plastic alternatives. Polymers with the potential to replace oil-based plastic have been made out of fish scales, sunflower hulls, olive pits, mushrooms, and potatoes to name a few. The sheer profusion of viable alternatives and yet total lack of scalable implementation motivated me to deeply explore this system, and to create my own plant-based polymer out of kelp. As one of the fastest growing organisms on the planet—in some environments growing as much as two feet per day—kelp is a sorely underutilized resource. Despite all of this potential, bioplastics currently only occupy 1 percent of the total market share. I hypothesized that the answers to petrochemical plastic’s continued pervasiveness were buried within our systems of production, consumption, and waste management. These are incredibly complex systems to disrupt, and clearly none of the aforementioned plastic alternatives have succeeded in disrupting all three. By introducing a kelp-based plastic alternative of my own, I have uncovered some of the reasons why my bioplastic predecessors failed, and why it remains incredibly challenging to replace plastic in a meaningful way. 5 Introduction This thesis maps out each of these aforementioned systems and identifies the blockages preventing sustainable polymers from becoming more widely adopted by consumers. In order to gain input from these consumers while alleviating the problem of single use plastics, my kelp-based polymer took the form of easter grass—a consumer facing packaging material. I have worked through the physical and conceptual failures and successes of replacing a traditional plastic product with a kelp-based product. Exploring kelp-based plastic with a design systems approach will be vital for future designers hoping to disrupt the petrochemical industry. Better understanding of systems of consumption, production, and waste management as they relate to my product has led to better questions about these systems, and ultimately better proposed solutions. I propose that we move away from petrochemical plastic packaging materials and shift our focus towards compostable alternatives. In turn we must reorient our waste management and urban planning systems to emphasize both composting and local plant-based food production. This will divert packaging materials from landfills and ecosystems into other consumable goods. The path forward is speculative, but rooted in research, and my firsthand experience of replacing a plastic product with a kelp-based one. Research Questions Why is plastic so pervasive despite the seeming abundance of alternatives? Can I successfully replace a plastic product with a kelp based one? Can the petrochemical industry be disrupted/subverted by kelp? 6 Climate Change The years 2016 and 2020 are tied for the warmest years on record. Our oceans are becoming more acidic, and, of course, the ice caps are melting. The purpose of this thesis is not to provide evidence of mans’ impact on the environment, but rather to provide tools to those who heed the evidence of science, and wish to create change. That being said, there are a number of ecological concerns which may not be common knowledge, but which are necessary for understanding the impetus of this thesis, the first of which is our ocean’s role as a carbon sink. The ocean is responsible for absorbing between 93 and 96 percent of the carbon in the atmosphere.1 This carbon is largely absorbed by algae such as kelp, other plant life, and the water itself. The process of too much carbon being absorbed into the water can result in ocean acidification creating carbonic acid through the interaction of carbon dioxide and water. Fish and other marine life fertilize the growth of marine algae and plants. When they are killed by plastic pollution, fishing practices, or ocean acidification, this can cause the death of entire ecosystems, algae and plant life included. Indeed some ecosystems are fragile enough to collapse from ocean acidification alone. Algae and sea plants store 20 times more carbon than land-based forests, so when they die, the amount of carbon they release into the atmosphere is astronomical. The carbon dumped into the atmosphere from killing one percent of marine plants and algae is equivalent to the annual emissions of 97 million cars.1 It is therefore necessary to begin to design with materials that will not destroy these precious ecosystems. 7 Kelp However, in contrast to coral reefs, these ecosystems are far more dynamic. A particularly warm summer or strong storm can wipe out an entire kelp forest. Luckily, kelp benefits from 1 billion years of evolution. Although it bears many of the same physical attributes of plant life, kelp is actually a large brown algae, one of the oldest forms of life on the planet. This evolutionary prowess allows kelp to grow readily, in ideal conditions as much as between 18 inches and 2 feet per day.2 This makes it one of the fastest growing organisms on the planet. In nature this means that these kelp forests are capable of regrowing readily after a particularly rough storm, but for our purposes this means that kelp is an ideal candidate to harvest sustainable materials from. In addition to being extremely fast growing, kelp is roughly 40 percent sodium alginate, the basic ingredient of my kelp based polymer, and 60 percent other organic material.3 For comparison, sugar cane is only roughly 20 percent sugar.4 Kelp is often farmed in the ocean, sometimes in a sustainable manner. When grown alongside shellfish and other foodstock seafoods, kelp provide the same type of environment it would in nature. This kelp is in turn harvested for human or livestock consumption. In Situ Kelp is one of the cornerstones of cold coastal waters. Kelp forests provide a consistent source of food and shelter for hundreds of thousands of sea creatures who live amongst the kelp fronds and feed upon the detritus (fallen and decaying matter). Kelp forests are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, providing a shelter for organisms to raise their young and a buffer from stormy waters. The sheer amount of species that take shelter amongst the kelp forests means that their level of ecological importance is akin to that of coral reefs. This makes kelp forests one of the most important ecosystems to protect in the world. 8 Kelp can be grown in aquaponic environments alongside foodstock fish, absorbing the fish waste and converting it into a usable product: kelp. This diminishes the environmental disruption of farming kelp in the ocean itself and limits it to a land use problem. Currently, fish waste is used as manure for other farming practices, but growing the other product alongside the foodstock fish diminishes the amount of transportation necessary, and in turn the carbon footprint. In nature, kelp can grow as far as 175 feet below the surface.2 This means that while kelp does photosynthesize, it requires a relatively low amount of natural or artificial light compared to terrestrial plant life, lowering the energy input necessary to grow it indoors or in an artificial setting. Additionally, bacteria can be bioengineered to produce sodium alginate, and are already being produced for medical applications.5 This biosynthesis combined with kelp’s natural ability to grow in an aquaponic environment mean that it can be grown just about anywhere. This provides a huge opportunity to vertically integrate the supply chain and grow, extract, generate materials, and produce products all in one location. I believe that kelp and other brown algae are truly a scalable and sustainable alternative to petrochemicals. In Vitro However, what I feel truly makes kelp an ideal candidate to compete with petrochemical plastic is accomplished in an artificial environment. This is largely due to its ability to be biosynthesized and the relatively low energy requirements required for growth. Both of these criteria are usefull, if not necessary when creating a scalable polymer in a lab setting. 9 What are Sustainable Materials? What makes a material sustainable? There are two main categories of materials: renewable and non-renewable. Non-renewable materials are those that exist in finite quantities. Once these materials are harvested, they will not be naturally replenished by the earth within our lifetimes or at all. Oil, for example, takes tens of millions of years to form. While this technically means that oil replenishes itself, it is, in a practical sense, finite. A renewable material is made from natural resources that replenishes itself. The degree to which this material replenishes itself varies, but the important takeaway is that the faster a material can replenish itself, the more renewable it is. A sustainable material, however, is not simply the most renewable resource that can be used to accomplish a given task. The sustainability of a material is determined by the system it exists in. In a 2015 report, the EPA writes, “The material life cycle begins with the extraction or harvesting of raw materials. Materials are then transported and processed to create the products and services that drive our society. They are distributed, consumed, reused or recycled, and ultimately disposed. Each stage of this cycle requires energy and water as inputs and creates impacts on the environment. Because the stages are interrelated, it is important that sound approaches to materials use consider the entire life cycle.”6 A sustainable material then, is one that considers each of the points (harvesting, distribution, consumption, etc.) within the system in order to minimize the amount of energy and water consumed while still remaining renewable. This means that while a material might be sustainable in one context, it becomes unsustainable in others. Consider for example, this hypothetical: There are two species of trees, the butterfly pine and the jackalope spruce. Both grow to be 100 feet tall and 5 feet in diameter. The butterfly pine grows to full height in 100 years, requires minimal water, and makes for solid sturdy lumber. Meanwhile 10 the jackalope spruce grows to full height in 50 years, consumes large amounts of water, and makes for soft lumber. The jackalope spruce is definitely more renewable. It grows to full height in half the time, meaning you can grow two jackalope pines for every butterfly pine. This, however, does not make it more sustainable in every context. If you use this wood for flooring, but the softness of the wood means that it must be replaced 3 times as often as the butterfly pine, the butterfly pine becomes more sustainable than the jackalope spruce. If its hefty water requirements means it only grows in specific regions and must be shipped great distances to get to its final destination, this too erodes its sustainability. There will of course be instances when the jackalope pine is more sustainable than the butterfly spruce, but the point is that renewability does not equate to sustainability. While renewability is one component of sustainability, the sustainability of the material depends on the system it is in. Even plastic, which is made from non-renewable materials and extracted and produced in an energy intensive and intercontinental way, could be considered sustainable in certain contexts. One could argue that plastic packaging that saves food from spoiling or electronic components from breaking is a sustainable use of this material. In this instance it is preventing the additional production of food or electronic components, and therefore saving both water and energy. Such uses for plastic are the hardest to eliminate from our systems, and therefore, most important to find viable and more sustainable alternatives to. Some plastics, such as plastic straws, can be eliminated from our lives with relative ease. It is the plastics that already perform a sustainable function within the system that will be most challenging to replace, but also the most valuable. It is important to note that while the function or consumption of this plastic is sustainable, many of the points along its life cycle are not. Extraction, distribution, and disposal of plastic are all extremely energy intensive, and in the case of disposal, borderline non-existent. More plastic ends up in the ocean than is recycled. There is still a huge opportunity to create sustainable, functional alternatives to plastic but it is important to evaluate all alternatives using the same systematic approach. 11 The Problem with Plastic A coworker recently asked me “do you know which numbers of plastic I can recycle in Portland?” She had just finished unwrapping a shipment we had received in the mail, and wanted to make sure that the plastic ended up in the right place. The question of how to best recycle is one that we have likely all been taught to ask, and on the surface it would appear to be a good one. We have been told that there are different kinds of plastics, with varying grades of recyclability, and that each of these plastics is sorted and given a second life as a bag or a water bottle. This is a lie. While there are various grades of plastics, and some plastics are given a second life, in 2017 only 9 percent of plastics that were placed in the recycling bin were ever actually recycled, and much of our plastic waste didn’t even make it to the recycling bin in the first place.7 We have been asking the wrong questions, and a good one to start asking is “Where does this plastic actually go?” A 9 percent rate of recycling already doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the efficacy of our current waste management system, and unfortunately, the state of recycling has only become more tenuous since then. You may expect plastic placed in a recycling bin in the USA to be processed and recycled in the USA as well. This is often not the case. For years, China was the world’s largest purchaser and recycler of plastic scrap, purchasing 33.4 percent of the US’s scrap in 2017 alone.8 That year, 3.7 billion pounds of plastic arrived in China, shipped across the ocean in fuel guzzling tankers, in order to be sorted and processed by men, women, and children alike into recycled plastic pellets to turn a modest profit. This work is grueling, and often relies on the labor of impoverished workers. A family of plastic recyclers can expect to earn roughly 5 dollars a day, or roughly ten times less than the national average income in China.9 Since the 90’s the US has gotten away with outsourcing their dirty work to China, perpetuating the lie of plastic recycling with human suffering and global economics. Without this source of cheap, ethically dubious labor, the worlds’ capacity to recycle its plastic 12 is drastically reduced If the US felt it was capable of making money off of our own plastic scrap, it would undoubtedly do so. Our exportation of this scrap is evidence that, within our current means, there simply isn’t money to be made by recycling plastics, and if there was, I’m sure that our rate of recycling would be far greater than 9 percent. As of 2018, China has halted the purchase of nearly all forms of plastic scrap from foreign countries, purchasing only 4.5 percent of the US’s plastic scrap, down from 33.4 in the previous year. In 2018 our projected recycling rate is expected to fall from 9 to 4.4 percent because of China’s diminished role in bolstering our recycling metrics, and because of an apparent lack of US recycling infrastructure and monetary incentivization. In my naivety, I once assumed that plastics in the recycling bin were actually recycled, a facade that has, up until now, been maintained by this system of plastic scrap exportation and crony capitalism. The very idea of recycling itself has been revealed to be a carefully constructed lie by the petrochemical industry. Larry Thomas, former head of the plastics Lobby SPI, is quoted as saying, “The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire, we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products. If the public thinks the recycling is working, then they’re not going to be as concerned about the environment.” The petrochemical industry accomplished their goal of legitimizing plastic recycling to the public with a costly set of advertising campaigns, recycling projects, and of course, government lobbying. As far back as the 1970’s they suspected that plastic recycling would never be viable, referring to it as, “costly” and “infeasible,” going on to state that they had, “serious doubt(s)” that widespread plastic recycling “can ever be made viable on an economic basis.” The fact that the petrochemical industry was investing in something that they never believed to be profitable in and of itself should begin to ring alarm bells in our collective skulls. This indicates that the industry’s embracing of recycling is, 13 and has always been, nefariously motivated, and that it is not just isolated to one plastic lobbying group. The plastics industry made a concerted effort to convince the public that plastics recycling was viable in an effort to stave off plastic bans, and by and large they have been successful. I for one, was entirely duped for most of my life. Even as the plastic industry’s shady practices have been exposed, the industry has shown no signs of slowing its propaganda campaign down. Laura Sullivan with NPR writes, “Plastic production overall is now expected to triple by 2050, and once again, the industry is spending money on ads and public relations to promote plastic and recycling.” It will take a concerted educational, governmental, and consumer effort to overcome what has become one of the largest and most insidious misinformation campaigns in recent history. Luckily, the facade has begun to crumble as insight into the underbelly of the recycling industry has begun to spread. Gone are the days when the United States could pass its problems along to the global economy in order to save face. China withdrawing its economic might from this lie could have huge implications on the plastic industry’s ability to wax poetic about the fabricated viability of plastic recycling, as more and more Americans will have to deal with the realities of recycling domestically. You might assume that China chose to halt purchasing plastic scrap for economic reasons, and while that might be partially true, much of the credit for China’s decision to halt the purchasing of most forms of plastic scrap goes to one man, Wang Juiliang. Wang Jiuliang is no economist, he makes movies. Jiuliang rose to prominence with his directorial debut, Beijing Besieged by Waste, a film that earned him notoriety amongst documentarians and the Chinese Government alike. Juiliang’s second film, Plastic China, follows the lives of a family of plastic recyclers in the Shandong province of China. Plastic China’s depiction of the recycling industry was so bleak, that he is credited with bringing about the ban on foreign plastic scrap purchasing. 10 14 In an interview about the film, Wang explains the meaning of the title “Plastic China,” stating, “The [word] ‘plastic’ here has two meanings: first it refers to the plastic waste, but at a deeper level it refers to the weakness beneath our surface prosperity; the way plastic surgery only improves appearance, not the reality.” In some ways, China allowed our lie to become their own, taking on the burden of shaping trash into an image of prosperity. China has since moved on from this idea, a decision that hopefully we can all learn from. Composting With the future of recycling looking so bleak, it would seem that nearly all plastic scrap is doomed to join the other 8 million tons that ends up in our oceans each year. Determined to not let this be the case, I began my effort to understand our current waste management system; Its successes, its failures, and the areas of intervention that might divert the most plastic from our oceans and landfills. In order to begin this exploration I talked to Meredith Sorenson, a self-proclaimed solid waste and recycling maeven. Some of Meredith’s qualifications include: communications director at Harvest Power, a composting company that creates nutrient rich soil and generates renewable energy, strategic advisor for Women in Solid Waste, and the owner of Solid Strategies, a solid waste consulting firm. With extensive experience in the solid waste industry, and an obvious passion for sustainability, Meredith made for the perfect candidate to conduct my first interview. Through our roughly hour and half long conversation, we moved through the current state of solid waste management in Portland Oregon (my current place of residence), its history, and her feelings on how to move forward into a more sustainable and equitable waste future. This insight into waste management on a more localized level was critical to my understanding of the system as a whole, and I hope it inspires others to start thinking about waste management systems as well. 15 Interviewer - JC Interviewee - MS JC Was there ever a turning point where you decided that you wanted to make composting and waste management a career instead of a habit? MS Yeah! And are you sure you haven’t totally read my bio? These are like the perfect questions for me to tell my funny story. So I was hiking the length of Madagascar in 2004 which is a whole different story. But I was probably about a third of the way up the country on an 8 month hike - And I saw this woman sweeping. For context, Madagascar is pretty poor, they say it’s the fourth poorest country in the world, and as a result, there’s just not a lot of consumables, people mostly grow what they eat. Anyway, I saw this woman sweeping corn husks and other stuff in her yard. And I went over and I snapped a photo of her sweeping. And I asked her about where she swept it to how often she swept, because basically, she was doing waste management, and I hadn’t really realized that that was what I was curious about. And then I noticed that she had a garden in the back of her little patio space, so I asked her about that, and said ‘where do you get the soil from?’ As it turned out, where she was sweeping to was the edge of this hill, and then she was gathering soil for her garden at the bottom of the hill. And so essentially, it was just naturally composting as it tumbled down. And it was nice and rich at the bottom. As we finished that interaction, I just had this glow, and I was so excited. And then I had another moment of realizing, like not many people do this, and not many people get this excited about this behavior around Solid Waste Management. And that was my click moment. So I thought ‘When I finish this hike, in six months or whatever, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna figure out a path with solid waste. And I don’t know what that’ll look like, I might be a garbage lady driving a garbage truck, but I’ll figure it out.’ JC So with that in mind, what would you say is the biggest problem with how people 16 compost? MS One way to think about that question is a process called waste path mapping. That’s where you think about a material and then map out into flow through the system. Imagine a linear flow, and every touch point along the way of where that flow can go. And then you can identify the barriers or opportunities at each touch point. So for example, are you talking about in the kitchen? Is the compost bin just as easy as the garbage? If so, there is no barrier there. Or is it getting icky? Then people won’t want to put things in their bin. Then you can think about hauling. In the solid waste world, there’s two fees to garbage. There’s a hauling fee and a tipping fee. So the hauling fee is the straight up capital costs that it takes to turn on the garbage truck, drive it through every single street and pick up all the garbage. That’s pretty fixed. That’s a fixed capital cost. You can’t really change that, except for how many times you do it - the frequency. Then the tipping fee, that’s what the hauler pays when they tip a material wherever they’re going, is usually measured by the ton. So Portland, in their wisdom, many years ago, realized that material is really easy to just throw in a giant hole, but people like to save money. So Portland intentionally set the tip fee for municipal solid waste high so that people started thinking ‘oh, can I get rid of this material less expensively? Oh, if I sort it, then I can. [For example], metals are the highest value and the easiest to recycle so you want to be sure you’re getting all the metals out of there. Then hazardous material, they might be small in volume, but they have the most impact in terms of leaching [so] you want to make sure you get those out of there. Organics, they have a lot of value, and then plastics, that’s really a quagmire. JC How do you feel about [the government] banning certain forms of material? Like various plastics or various forms of plastic, such as single use straws, etc? MS 17 I feel like single use straws probably aren’t worth the time and energy that are put into banning them. But that video of the sea turtle, a charismatic megafauna with the straw stuck up its nose, is really compelling. But how much impact do single use straws have? JC Would it be fair to say that you see it as more of addressing a symptom rather than the problem? MS Well, sometimes you gotta just get the tip of the spear in before you can actually change behavior. So if banning straws, then gets people thinking about durable dishware... if that’s [the] strategy... Cool! I lived in Africa for a few years, and they did not allow film plastic - any plastic had to be more than one mil thick. And so that rule on the production side of things was fascinating because all of a sudden, you had to spend a lot of money to make these bags. It wasn’t just these little sachets that tore open with the slightest cut. All of a sudden it was these really durable bags that were really valued. Because vendors would then charge for the bag. So it cleaned up the streets. Because people really valued that bag that they [bought], and they reuse it over and over again. Then they coupled that with neighborhood cleanups and getting them out of the rivers. So when done well, I think those targeted approaches and working upstream and downstream can be really effective. Yeah. Another example of that is in Europe. In Belgium, they implemented a pay as you throw system. Usually, you just [pay] an average fee. Well, in Belgium, they went a step further, and they implemented scales on their garbage trucks. And they started charging each household based on the weight of their garbage. So they didn’t say, you know, we kind of know the average - we’re gonna charge everyone 40 bucks for this size can. They say no - you, Jake, we will charge you exactly based on how much you throw. And it’s an intense upfront capital cost to put in 18 these trucks [and teach] these skills, but then all of a sudden, you get your bill and you’re like, oh man, that was a 70 pound garbage day, that’s a lot of money. Then what happened was people would go to stores and when they bought something with a ton of packaging, they would unbox the thing from the packaging and leave the packaging of the stores and then bring the item home because they know that garbage. And then it started going upstream because then the stores are paying these astronomical waste fees, and they started contacting the product manufacturers and [saying], Dude, do you really need to put all this stuff around your thing that’s flat and solid, like just put a label on it, call it good. And that started shifting manufacturing lines and how they deliver goods. So we started out with straws, and targeting upstream or banning. And then that was one strategy. And then I just ended up starting downstream, in a way that trickles upstream. Key takeaways Upstream vs downstream interventions Waste path mapping The efficacy of composting Industrial composting vs. home composting Key Questions How does my solution fit in? How do reorient our waste managment system to revolve around composting? Plastic’s Pervasiveness The public’s perception of plastic has been greatly swayed by lobbyists. Their concerted effort to convince us that plastic could be sustainable through recycling was largely successful, and we see that in the implementation of plastic recycling as one of our primary forms of waste management despite its deficiencies. Of all plastics produced, the vast majority is now in landfills, and will be for thousands 19 of years. Only a tiny fraction of this plastic was ever recycled, and of that plastic, the vast majority ended up in landfills after another product cycle. The public perception that the process of plastic recycling is far more efficient than it is is certainly part of the problem. Anecdotally, when asked to guess the efficiency of our plastic recycling system, all “plastic consumers” I interviewed guessed between 30 percent and 100 percent. Everyone was shocked to hear that the true answer was only in the single digits. However, the insidious nature of plastic in our lives goes far beyond shady lobbyist practices. Indeed it is an integral part of many Americans’ lives, many of whom would literally be unable to survive without it. Figure 1: Our world in data generated this alluvial diagram that depicts the fate of our total plastic production between 1950 and 2015. Plastics were initially categorized into “still in use” and “used once”. Plastics that were categorized as “used once” then flow into the remaining fates. Most of this plastic, even that which has been recycled, is now in a landfill.12 20