plastic fantastic

What does the Portland Art Museum have to do with plastic?

Very little?Built in 1932, its facade flanks the west side of the South Park Blocks, a restrained composition of brick and stone, its long horizontal lines a nod to the Prairie School of Archetecture by Frank Lloyd Wright.The architect was Pietro Belluschi.Thirty years later, Belluschi would be asked to help design the Philadelphia headquarters of Rohm and Haas the chemical company best known for developing Plexiglas.

The finished building was wrapped in great bronze-colored screens made from the company’s own acrylic plastic. They filtered the sun like Japanese shoji screens, softening the building’s scale and changing with the light.By 1964, Plastic had become architecture.And its story began with dung.For centuries, making leather from hides required a process called bating. Hides were treated with preparations containing animal excrement to soften them. The work was slow, unpleasant, and foul.At the beginning of the twentieth century, a young German chemist named Otto Röhm saw a chemical solution.Röhm discovered that the useful agents in the traditional bating process were enzymes. If those enzymes could be isolated and controlled, chemistry could replace an ancient and unpredictable process with one that was cleaner, more precise, and scalable.But to make his solution commercially viable, Röhm needed something else..Enter his old friend Otto Haas.Haas was in the United States gaining business experience, working as a clerk for G. Siegle & Co., a German dye and chemical manufacturer. Röhn understood chemistry. Haas understood business.In 1907, the two men formed Röhm and Haas to manufacture and sell Oropon, the new bating agent.Convincing tanneries to use it was not easy.Tanning was an old craft. Its methods had been developed over generations. The work required understanding how a hide felt, how it responded, and how temperature, time, and treatment altered the final product.A new chemical had to prove itself against that accumulated knowledge.Haas and his salesmen demonstrated Oropon to tanners. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. When it failed, information traveled back to Röhm, who adjusted the chemical composition and tried again.A slow process of trial and error but a process working together: Chemist→salesman→Tanner→and back to Chemist.It was a slow process.On September 1, 1909, the company established its American branch at 202 North Second Street in Philadelphia. Among the tanneries Haas courted were Best and Foerderer, farther northeast along the elevated railway in the Frankford section of the city(YouTube of the “L”).Then came the First World War.With it came enormous demand for leather goods: boots, belts, saddles, and military equipment. Tanners needed to produce more, consistently and more quickly.Rohm and Haas grew.But Röhms research did not end with enzymes.His doctoral work had focused on acrylic acid and its polymerization. (links to both definitions). He believed acrylic chemistry contained possibilities that had barely been explored. With corporate laboratories and researchers behind the effort, the work eventually produced an extraordinary new material:PlexiglassLightweight.Malleable.Resistant to shattering.Transparent.And once again, war produced a need..Aircraft presented a problem. Pilots, navigators, gunners, and bombardiers needed to see through enclosures that were curved, lightweight, and strong. Conventional glass was heavy, brittle, and poorly suited to the demands of flight.Plexiglas was.Demand exploded.The United States of the twentieth century can be defined, in large measure, by the model Röhm and Haas represented: science and the corporation.Business advancement increasingly depended on the continual introduction of new science and new technologies. The advancement of science, in turn, increasingly depended on corporate employment, corporate facilities, and corporate finance.But success introduced a new problem.At Röhm and Haas, one of the starkest examples did not come from Plexiglas production itself, but from another part of the company– its expanding chemical business.Building 6At the company’s Bridesburg plant in Philadelphia, workers in Building 6 were involved in chloromethylation processes that could expose them to chloromethyl ethers, including bis(chloromethyl) ether, or BCME.The problem wasn’t seen.A hide treated incorrectlyy with Oropon provided relatively immediate evidence that something had gone wrong. The people using it could report failure. The information could travel back through the company. The chemistry could be changed.But exposure to a carcinogen doesn’t show up immediately.By 1972, Röhm and Haas had instituted air monitoring, medical examinations, and a program intended to detect lung cancer. But when federal occupational-health investigators examined the plant, they found something disturbing.In reviewing the history of the workforce, the investigators found that the lung-cancer death rate among past and present employees was higher than expected.Many, younger men.The workers who developed lung cancer before the age of forty had all worked in Building 6 where chloromethylation processes took place.The problem was not exclusive to Röhm and Haas. It is embedded in the extraordinary pace at which twentieth-century industrial chemistry was developing.Companies became very sophisticated at measuring the proformance of their products and how well it solved a problem. What was not measured, was the changes it would cause to human health and the environment.The product worked exactly as intended.And it carried a cost no one could see.

GLASS

Bottles and JarsThat’s it.

Wine bottles, beer bottles, olive-oil bottles, jam jars, pickle jars–the containers made to hold food and drink

Don’t even think about drinking glasses, eyeglasses, mirrors, windows, ceramics, and cookware–they may look like they belong, but they don’t. They are made differently and melt at different temperatures.

And unlike the other recyclable materials collected in the Oregon system: paper, plastic and metal, glass gets its own bin.

The reason:Broken bottles and jars can still be recycled. But when broken glass mixes with paper, plastic, and metal, it interferes with recovering those materials. Shards are hard to sort out, can damage machinery, and pose a safety hazard to workers.

RECYCLING GLASS

Empty
Rinced
Labels ok

NO lids, corks, caps
Just glass

Some of these things
don't belong here.

Can you tell which ones?

they all look like paper
They all keep food fresh
they're all coated to resist moisture

The Difference is the Design

Milk and broth cartons are made in layers, allowing recyclers to separate and recover the paper fibers.Most frozen-food packaging uses coatings or combinations of materials that make the paper fibers difficult to separate and reuse.

Milk & Broth Cartons

YES

Frozen Food Packaging

NO

deep dive

Diving Girl adapted from Jantzen's historic Portland iconography– a small piece of our local visual history, repurposed here with appreciation.Jantzen Diving Girl ©/^TM. are trademarks of their respective owner. Permission requested.

why

are frozen-food boxes different?

when in doubt

ask

METRO

use well

know more

bring your own

Take your favorite mug to the coffee shop–or keep a reusable cup or thermos with you when you’re on the go.And when your barista notices, ask them to snap a photo of you with your mug. Post it to Instagram, tag the coffee shop, and add #SiSuSuSiDoMore.Bringing your own eliminates the disposable paper cup, its plastic lining, and plastic lid.Small actions repeated often add up.

notice the packaging

Before you buy it again, find out what the company says about the package.Start with the companies website. Search for answers to these questions:

What is the packaging made from?

How much of it is made from recycled materials?

Look specifically for PCR–post-consumer recycled content–material that has already been used and recovered.

Can it be recycled when its purpose has been served?

"Recyclable" doesn't necessarily mean it can be recycled where you live. Check METRO.

METRO

Promises or progress?

Is the company eliminating packaging, making it lighter, or offering refillable and reusable options–or simply replacing one disposable material with another?Are they tracking their impact? Look for a baseline year, a target date, and reported results.Ask: What does this company put into our waste system–and what responsibility does it take for what happens next?And after you've done all that research, read the sustainability report, deciphered the packaging claims and checked with METRO...maybe you don't need it after all.

eat what you buy

One of the most impactful things we can do for the climate is also one of the simplest:Consume what we already have.The average Oregonian throws away about 120 pounds of food at home each year.At the same time, roughly 1 in 8 Oregonians experiences food insecurity.For many of us, abundance feels like security. A full refrigerator. A freezer packed to the edges. Something extra in the pantry, just in case.But abundance can make food hard to find.We buy another package because we’ve forgotten the one buried behind the ice cream. We freeze leftovers and find them six months later covered in freezer burn.What gets thrown away isn't just the food–or what we paid for it.It's the land and water used to grow it. The labor to harvest and process it. The energy to package, transport, refrigerate and freeze it....only to throw it away in the end?

how to waste less

shop your kitchen first

make leftovers tomorrow's breakfast

buy what you will actually eat

keep the freezer useful, not stuffed

first in, first out

freeze it, label it, use it

compost scraps

Notice what you throw away

what type of tree is used to make paper

In the Pacific Northwest, paper often starts with what remains after logs are turned into lumber. Those logs come primarily from Douglas fir, western hemlock, true firs, spruce, and pine, with hardwoods such as red alder and cottonwood also contributing fiber.Sawmills produce chips, sawdust, shavings, and other wood by-products. Much of that material isn’t discarded. Wood chips can become pulp–the fiber used to make paper and packaging.But trees aren’t the only source of paper fiber. Paper can also be made from agricultural leftovers such as wheat and rice straw and sugarcane bagasse, as well as plants including flax and bamboo.Bamboo is often seen as a “green” alternative. It grows extraordinarily quickly and can be harvested in just a few years.But fast-growing doesn’t necessarily mean low-impact.Much of the bamboo used for papermaking is grown and processed in Asia. Turning it into pulp requires energy, water, and chemicals; transporting the finished fiber or paper adds another environmental cost. Some research comparing bamboo with wood-based fibers such as eucalyptus has found that bamboo paper can require more land and energy to produce.

how much packaging do we consume ?

Online shopping has increased the amount of packaging we use and discard.Oregon DEQ specifically identifies the growth of e-commerce as a source of increased packaging use and waste. In Oregon, packaging accounts for an estimated 20-30% of household and business waste.Nationally, the numbers are similar. According to the U.S. EPA, containers and packaging account for 28.1% of municipal solid waste generated in 2018–more than 82 million tons a year. Paper and paperboard packaging alone accounted for 14.3% of the entire waste stream.Every online purchase requires something to contain, protect, and transport it: cardboard boxes, paper cushioning, plastic films, padded envelopes, and other shipping materials.

Why are frozen-food boxes different

Part of the answer:

A milk carton and a frozen food box seem to belong together; both are paper-based, and both hold food, but the similarity ends there.The dairy industry has long been tied to schools, public health, and regional identity. Milk, once a part of everyday life, came to symbolize trust. As consumption grew, so did the waste– and with it, the potential for that trust to erode.The dairy industry helped build a coordinated recycling system, working with packaging producers like Tetra Pak to ensure those cartons had a viable afterlife.A milk carton is designed to hold a perishable but relatively stable liquid: it needs protection from light and air, but not from extreme conditions.Its structure addresses those needs. Layers of paper provide rigidity, while thin films of plastic and sometimes aluminum create a protective barrier that delays disintegration. Paper fiber remains the dominant component. With the right infrastructure, those layers can be separated, and the fibers recovered. The packaging is complex but designed to come apart.Frozen food is a different species. Here, the promise is convenience: dinner, ready in under twenty minutes.To deliver that convenience, its packaging must endure freezer to microwave–moisture to heat. To perform under these conditions, it is often treated with polymer coatings or laminated layers that bond tightly to the paper substrate.These layers don’t separate easily. In the pulping process, water and agitation break down the paper into individual fibers. But polymer coatings resist water and remain bonded to some of those fibers. When the plastic is screened out, usable fiber goes with it.The frozen-food industry is also more fragmented. Unlike dairy, it spans everything from vegetables and pizza to ice cream and prepared meals. With so many different requirements, there is no simple path to recyclability.Until recently, the cost of disposal was largely absent from the producer's income statement. A company had to account for what it cost to make the package, fill it, ship it, and sell it–but not what it would cost to deal with that package once it was empty.Recycling is not driven solely by technical possibility; it is shaped by economics.Milk cartons, once processed, can yield fibers that retain value. Frozen food boxes tend to yield less recoverable fiber at a higher processing cost. In a market-driven system, the question is not simply whether it can be recycled, but whether it makes sense to do so.Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act begins to shift that equation. Producers are increasingly responsible for the end-of-life impacts of their packaging. Materials that are harder to process may cost more than materials that integrate more easily into the system.The difference between a milk carton and a frozen food box, then, is not just about materials.It reflects a system of choices- what industries prioritize, what the infrastructure supports, what costs are accounted for, and what we, as consumers, choose and demand.

Diving Girl, A Portland Icon, repurposed.

How much do we use?

Toilet paper gets used once.
Then we flush it.Americans use an estimated 141 rolls per person each year–about 28 pounds of toilet paper.Most toilet paper sold in the US is still made primarily from new wood fiber.But it doesn’t have to be.Toilet paper can be made from recovered paper instead. In Halsey, Oregon, Georgia-Pacific makes ARIA toilet paper from 100% recycled fiber, primarily office and school paper. It earns an A+ from NDRC’s The Issue with Tissue Scorecard.Here is the curious part:ARIA is made in Oregon, but the company’s current retailer list identifies no Oregon brick-and-mortar retailer.

In Halsey, Oregon

Georgia-Pacific employs hundreds of people making toilet paper and paper towels, including ARIA, a three-ply tissue made from 100% recycled fiber and packaged in recycled paper.The mill is growing. Georgia-Pacific announced a $150 million expansion to increase toilet-paper production.Koch, Inc., a privately held company based in Wichita, Kansas, owns Georgia-Pacific.Oregon has the resource.Oregon has the labor.However, the mill is not locally owned.What toilet paper are Oregonians buying?And where does that money go?