Designing Single-Use Plastic Products: Far from the Earthly Paradise

Abstract

Single-use plastic products design has been one of the cleverest and efficient plastic design achievements of the last decades of the twentieth century. New, simple, inexpensive and innovative solutions based on the flexibility of the technologically advanced plastics found wider applications in the everyday lives of millions of people around the world. Nevertheless, the bliss of these economic, handy products-miracles of the ever-growing global technology soon became a nightmare as all the plastic that has ever been produced has never been totally biodegraded and is still in some form on the planet. Although we use them for a few minutes, they can stay in the environment for hundreds of years. Our dependence on single-use plastics has now become unmanageable, and plastic pollution is everywhere: from our body through the food chain to the more remote beaches and uninhabited islands. This article aims to examine not only the advantages of single-use plastic product design, but also to point out their serious defaults, such as environmental pollution and discuss the possible measures to be taken by several public and state bodies, especially EU, who intend to protect people, economy and the planet itself.