The German version of »Unpacked! Plastic, Waste, & Me« is a book, printed with water-soluble inks on recycled paper. These inks are made from plant oils such as linseed oil, soybean oil, or tree resin, instead of mineral oils. They can be washed out of the printing press without solvents using a small amount of detergent and water, and then disposed of. The pages of the book are joined to form a book block, which is then glued into the cover. The cover is printed with the inks before a protective layer of varnish is added. We have deliberately not used any plastic film, as most books do. The book itself, then, is completely free of plastic.
To ensure they are transported safely and don’t slide around, books are packed into boxes made of recycled cardboard and stacked on a pallet. The pallet is usually wrapped in plastic film so that nothing moves around during transport. One form of almost plastic-free transportation, which we use for our book, works like this: The boxes containing the books are loaded onto the pallet in a large cardboard box and then lashed together with straps made of recycled plastic. We need the straps, but do they have to be made of plastic?
How do products need to be designed and made so that they last a long time and can be repaired? If you have a smartphone or tablet, a broken screen or the camera can be replaced, but that’s about all. Everything else is usually either made of plastic or welded into the plastic. If something breaks, you normally have to get rid of the entire smartphone.
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