Replacing Petrochemicals

This image has been posted on Twitter as a replacement for this older list:

Both of these are attempts to illustrate that petrochemicals are indispensible. There is a problem with the second list because it’s out of date, although how old exactly isn’t clear. I’m guessing it’s 1990s CE because it mentions DVDs. The second is actually more interesting and detailed than the first. It also overlaps with a period in my life when I spent considerable time working on a project I refer to as the “Steady State”, which has influenced a lot of my writing, including my novels ‘Replicas’, ‘Unspeakable’ and ‘1934’. This puts me in an unusually good position to respond to this list.

First some backstory. I’ve been interested in Green issues since the early to mid-’70s and consequently much of my thinking in this area is oriented around this kind of issue. Some time in the 1990s, I was gifted a large single-volume encyclopædia which covered all sorts of areas, including an extensive survey of technology and industry. This, I feel, did a good job of breaking industry at the time into categories which covered these fields very efficiently and completely without leaving many gaps. Since at the time I was training to be a herbalist, I was substantially interested in the field of pharmacology, which I was later to study as part of my course. It was also possible to extend the approach taken within herbalism applied to pharmacology to other fields. Ultimately I was able to produce a fairly rudimentary but very broad corpus of information as to how more ecologically sound practices could be introduced across the board. This was ultimately to form the basis of several of my fictional undertakings.

I call this the Steady State with reference to Fred Hoyle’s cosmology. Hoyle held the very influential mid-century view that the Universe was eternal and infinite, but also that space was constantly expanding. Since this would ultimately lead to a situation where the galaxies were so far apart that they would be invisible to each other, he posited the notion of “continuous creation”, which is the idea that a very small quantity of matter springs spontaneously into existence in practically empty space. It’s been said to amount to the equivalent of a single atom of hydrogen per volume of space equivalent to the Empire State Building. Up until that time, the Steady State Theory was the best-supported cosmological theory available. It appeals quite strongly to me, as you may have noticed from the many times I’ve mentioned Hoyle on this blog. However, it’s long since been refuted and replaced by the Big Bang theory. Hoyle himself seems to have cloven to the idea long after everyone else relinquished it, and as such it’s one of several examples of a distinguished scientist refusing to give up their heterodox views in old age. Another example is Lord Kelvin, who insisted that Earth was only a few hundred million years old because of how long it would’ve taken to cool down, ignoring the heating action of radioactive decay which allows it to be æons older than that.

Albert Einstein was an early exponent of the Steady State Theory, although he quickly rejected it. Hoyle arrived at it in 1948, very close to the middle of the twentieth century. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1964 made it difficult to maintain as opposed to the Big Bang Theory, but even by the time I was reading about cosmology in the early 1970s, many scientists were still presenting it as a viable alternative. It would be fair to say that it was basically gone by ’72, which fits my narrative better so I’m going to say that.

Another influence on my view was the film ‘Pleasantville’, in which a brother and sister find themselves thrown into a black-and-white 1950s television show with the expected attitudes. The idea of ’50s America is such a stereotype nowadays I don’t need to repeat it here, but the point of interest for me in this film is that it parodies the insistence on creationism in schools through what it calls something like “the steady state theory of history”, that is, that as TV series often “press the reset button” at the end of each episode, from the perspective of their protagonists, everything stays the same.

It’s difficult to write stories set in the future because change is constant and this can make them seem dated very quickly. If, however, the author can contrive some kind of artifice rendering technological and consequent social change gradual or static, and in particular generate a retro atmosphere, this can be circumvented. This can be seen in some of Wyndham’s work and also in John Christopher’s Tripods series. Many people are also quite attached to this mythicised period of the mid-twentieth century, and literally speaking the middle third of that century was a 12 175-day period stretching from 3rd May 1934 to 2nd September 1967. In my novel ‘1934’, the dates appear to be looping between those two dates endlessly, although in fact they aren’t. There’s a reason for this based in the “Steady State project”: if you want a technology and culture to persist indefinitely, given current scientific and technical know-how you can only really maintain things at mid-century levels. As soon as you introduce something like, say, semiconductors, it complicates things and the question of sustainability arises, not because such technology is essentially unsustainable so much as because there is a lag between the development of technology for use and how to address that technology in terms of cradle-to-grave processes such as reuse, recycling and the sourcing and extraction of new materials. Ironically, this actually means that sustainable technology is easiest to imagine in the mid-century setting even though that time is associated with much poorer environmentalist consciousness. It should be noted, however, that although the kind of setting and lifestyle available does look like the 1950s, it isn’t backed up by 1950s-style processes. It’s just that the older techniques employed can only be pushed so far before they become impractical.

In any event, this long-term project of mine did result in an imaginary world where it would be much more feasible for this civilisation to continue in the long term without much technological change. Taking herbalism as an example, it’s possible not only to use herbal remedies themselves but also to extract biochemicals from plants, and in fact animals although this would present ethical problems, for the treatment of a wide variety of conditions, and although it would itself be unethical, for example, not to use antimetabolites for cancer, the consumption of petrochemicals would still be dramatically reduced by taking this approach.

Therefore, I’m able to plough through lists like the ones above and suggest alternatives, which end up whittling down the use of petrochemicals considerably. An eighth of fossil fuel use is in the form of petrochemicals, so this is far from a trivial contribution. It should also be noted, first of all, that although much petrochemical activity uses mineral oil as a raw material, the actual compounds in that oil need not be sourced from that substance itself since it’s fairly straightforward to produce aliphatic hydrocarbons from fixed vegetable oils by saturating them and removing them from the glycerol to which they are usually attached. Although they are in fact from mineral oil, they needn’t be.

Here we go then. There will now ensue a long list:

• Toothbrush: for some of my life, toothbrushes have consisted of wooden handles with replaceable wooden heads, whose bristles have been made of plastic. Although this plastic, which could of course either be recycled or made from plastic synthesised from vegetable sources. In order not to get repetitive, I’m going to talk about toothbrush bristles in some depth here.

There is first of all a glib, easy option, which is however entirely unacceptable due to not being vegan. This is in fact a recurring theme, which I will address now. Because I’m considering older technology, much of it was unfortunately based on the exploitation of other animals, and it probably doesn’t need saying that there will inevitably be many sources of bristles from various mammals. However, in order not to be absolutely monstrous we must ignore this option and instead explore the possibility of plants. Unfortunately it’s difficult to comment on the possibility of plant sources for bristles because their actual origins seem to be closely-guarded secrets. Bamboo is a common claim but it isn’t clear if this refers to the bristles themselves. I’ve found various registered trade marks referring to the bristles, meaning that I can’t give a definitive answer to the question of sources.

• Safety goggles: This is fairly general in the sense that it may not apply to all the ends to which these are applied.  However, it seems clear that they could be made from toughened glass and perhaps use rubber seals.  When I say “rubber”, I’m referring to the biological product which can be made from various sources of latex including, for instance, dandelions.  There aren’t going to be many air miles involved considering the plethora of local sources all over the land surface of this planet.  The principles involved apply to glasses of both the sun and eye varieties.
• Lipstick: One possible response to this is that lipstick is simply unnecessary, but I’d be hypocritical to say that.  It can be made from shea butter and coconut with beetroot and turmeric as colouring.  Although I haven’t tried this, doing so might not answer the question of practicality as I don’t have that particular capacity.
• Planes:  These should of course be used as little as possible in any case.  Where air travel is unavoidable, the question of airships arises.  Work is being done on electric planes.  My prejudice tells me that this is unlikely to be very successful for large planes for a very long time, if ever.  With the availability of video calls, it seems there is less reason than there used to be to travel by plane.  I have to hold my hands up here and say I have been on a plane four times, but each time it would’ve been time-consuming but possible to have made the same journey by train, were it not so expensive.  Hence this is a kind of government policy thing rather than a necessity to fly everywhere, and this raises a secondary issue or some might say the primary one: a lot of this depends on government or MNC-level infrastructure and logistics change, which is one answer to that situation when someone comes up to you and says “have you got a car?” or whatever in order to point out hypocrisy.
• Contact lenses: I  would say first of all, as a spectacle-wearer, that I dislike the idea of  contact lenses, don’t accept their necessity and point out the existence of laser eye surgery, which I admit I’m not willing to undergo because of the risks.  Glass contacts exist, of course, but the cornea can’t respire if they’re used.  To be honest, the whole idea of contact lenses is quite disturbing and also potentially dangerous as it ends up inhibiting one of the reflexes used to test for brain death.  I honestly think we can do without contacts entirely and wouldn’t miss them, although some people might want to alter the colour of their irises relatively safely.
• Smartphone: In the older list, it just says “Phone”.  There are a few issues here.  I do have a smartphone.  When I bought it, I was under the misapprehension that it was refurbished, but unfortunately it was new.  There are of course absolutely massive ethical problems with the materials used for smartphones, largely centred on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Add to that the influence of social media and excessive screen time in general, whose latter is to be fair partly a moral panic, it seems a bit like a garnish to talk about the petrochemical side of things, but there are still ways to address the use of plastics, which I doubt is the only issue.  Even so, a smartphone case needn’t be plastic.  It could be metal, wooden or xylonite.  This last is a kind of plastic-like material of which old dial telephone cases used to be composed, and is heavily vulcanised rubber, that is, rubber (biological product) treated with sulphur.  Sulphur too is found in biological materials, so the fact that it crops up here doesn’t imply that it has to be mined.
• Laptop: Most of what applies to smartphones also applies to laptops, but on a larger scale.  Considering the exterior of this laptop as an example, the case is made of aluminium (which incidentally is not easy to produce in an environmentally-friendly way but is easy to recycle), the keyboard and screen of plastic.  Since this particular laptop display is not touch-sensitive, there’s no reason other than fragility that it shouldn’t be covered in ordinary glass.  Computer keyboards have a long and dishonourable history which includes sheets of rubber, but also much nicer ones which this device lacks, usually but not inevitably made of plastic.  Printed circuit boards, incidentally, can be made of cork or arrays of cuttable metal tracks in some kind of matrix which needn’t be plastic.
• Rubber gloves: Well, they’re rubber so. . .
• Crayons:  Very similar to lipstick.  Basically coloured wax, and by no means something needing to be made from petrochemicals.
• Helmet: I don’t know enough about helmets to comment on this.  However, even if there is a residual quantity of products which absolutely require petrochemicals for construction, as opposed to recycled materials or plant-derived hydrocarbons, the fact that the rest don’t reduces consumption drastically.
• Washing machine:  just want to point out that although labour-saving devices are good, there used to be such a thing as a “copper”, consisting of cast iron and copper, and that the motor which rotates a washing machine barrel is also made of copper wire and iron, so the question arises of where exactly the petrochemicals come in and whether there’s a way to reduce them.
• Ski jacket: This is rather general.  Presumably the issue is insulation rather than the outer fabric or lining, which can clearly be replaced.  There is an insulating material called kapok, the seed material from a couple of species of cotton relatives in the Malvaceæ, which applies very broadly to various stuffing and insulation uses in this list.
• Wind turbine: A wind turbine is a windmill, basically.  I presume this refers to strong light-weight material used in their construction, but clearly that isn’t absolutely necessary to generate wind power.
• Dentures: Xylonite and apatite (the mineral from which bones and teeth are made).
• Fitness tracker:  I’m a bit of a Luddite.  I have,so far as I can tell, no use for such a device but I suspect the answer is similar to that given for smartphones.
• Yoga outfit: This is a bit complicated.  I started doing Yoga in the early 1970s and for most of the time I have not worn anything like this to do it.  I feel there is a marketing ploy going on here.  On the other hand, there are practical benefits to compression wear for exercise connected to circulation and protecting muscles from low-level injury.  Also, there’s the psychological effect of sunk costs, a process from which the likes of Under Armour and Lululemon benefit, that if you invest that much in garments you might be more committed to continuing to exercise.  There’s also the issue of self-consciousness and exercising in a group.  This is all a bit of a mess of issues which raise social and ethical questions outside the matter of petrochemical use.
• Shampoo: There is no need at all for petrochemicals to be used in shampoo.  Saponins and saponifiable fixed oils render them completely unnecessary, and these are widely available.
• Headphones: This calls to mind early radio operators and possibly telephone operators operating in the last decade of the nineteenth century, whose headphones may not have been up to much but presumably did not include petrochemicals.  They probably did include leather though.  In turn, this indicates a long chain of decisions made where petrochemicals were routinely used or considered as an option.  Nonetheless they clearly don’t need them.  They’re basically telephone handsets, which again are made from carbon granules, xylonite and copper wiring.
• Garden hose: Made of rubber.
• Syringe: Can be made from metal, glass and ceramic.
• Running shoes: Mine are made from rubber and canvas. These are unfortunately important.  Running shoes are much more important than all other running kit put together, and running is an important form of exercise.
• Carbon-fibre bicycle: Originally made from rayon, later from polyurethane and tar.
• Toy blocks: Wood.
• Electric piano: Basically a musical laptop.
• Kayak: These were very obviously made from something else originally.

I just want to reiterate what recourse can be made in the absence of other options because it bears repeating more clearly, and also how we ended up in this situation.  It’s notable that from the other list, many of the uses are now obsolete for one reason or another, and many other uses are undesirable, for instance the golfing-related examples.  As time goes by, we may find we no longer need the uses on this list as much as we currently do, or at all.  One example is air travel.  This is becoming increasingly unimportant as the likes of Zoom take over, and 3-D printing may also mean that transportation of small components becomes less important while retaining the use of the raw materials, but the raw materials themselves could be replaced with non-mineral analogues such as polylactic acid.  It isn’t so much that we have to use these materials as that we’ve become addicted to them as a society, and that the research and development has tended to go in the direction of using them.  The mere contingent fact that we might need petrochemicals currently does not mean we necessarily cannot produce these products in any other way.  It just means the work hasn’t been done.

Clearly it would be a huge industrial upheaval to change the actual raw materials for all such products.  Fortunately this is not immediately necessary.  Because we have oceans, for example, full of plastic, we already have quite a lot of these raw materials available to us already.  We do of course have the problem of the energy input needed to recover those materials.  Besides that, we also have the ability to produce identical compounds as are currently produced by the petrochemical industry without actually using mineral oil, because we can produce long-chain aliphatic hydrocarbons from the likes of vegetable oil and wax.

To conclude, we have gotten ourselves into a mess, but we can get ourselves out of it if the will is there.