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Cacti-Plastic Fantastic, Sandra Pascoe Ortiz

What do cacti and fossil fuels have in common? More than you might think, as scientist Sandra Pascoe Ortiz discovered when developing a way to reinvent plastic.

Alicja Hagopian, Fall 2022
Image provided by the artist.

What do cacti and fossil fuels have in common? More than you might think, as scientist Sandra Pascoe Ortiz discovered when developing a way to reinvent plastic.

The global plastics industry is valued at nearly 600 billion USD, and has made its way into every part of our lives. Healthcare, food, clothing, cleaning supplies: it is hard to find a product which does not contain some form of plastic. As art collective Luz Interruptus showed in our article on page 19, overconsumption is a huge problem and industries need to be moving away from plastics as much as possible. Nonetheless we rely heavily on plastics and it is currently impossible to eliminate their use entirely. Especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, many measures implemented to minimise consumption of plastics were reversed. Sales of disposable masks, bags, and gloves skyrocketed and consumers veered back towards plastic packaging which they could wipe clean of any bacteria.

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