The ethics of polymer clay

I’ve been working with polymer clay for even longer than I’ve been making mosaics, but I have always had a nagging doubt as to whether it is ethical to be using it in my artwork, given the impact of plastics on the environment. Here’s where I’m at with it.

Environment

Polymer clay is based on PVC (polyvinyl chloride) mixed with a plasticiser. The basic raw materials for PVC are derived from salt, which produces chlorine, and oil from which ethylene is derived. According to Greenpeace, PVC ‘is the most environmentally damaging plastic’. Not great. The only positive I can find here is that polymer clay is a tiny proportion of all the PVC in the world. PVC is everywhere – shoes, floors, windows, water pipes, cables – everywhere. That doesn’t excuse using it, and we should of course aim for alternatives that are not dependent on fossil fuels – I’ll be coming back to this shortly.

Lack of biodegradability, leaching of chemical components and the release of dioxins through burning make disposal of PVC an issue. The use of landfill in the UK at least is declining, and strict emission controls on exhausts from incinerators reduce the amount of toxins released into the environment. Recycling is also on the increase (PVC has the number 3 in the recycling logo) but there are difficulties physically sorting the different types of plastic, and the problem of separating the additives found in PVC products - polymer clay has various additives including fillers and colouring agents.

One way around the disposal issue as far as polymer clay goes is to prevent clay ending up in the waste stream in the first place. I can honestly say that I have no clay waste. One of the wonderful things about polymer clay as an art medium is that you can use it again and again until it is cured, so no mistakes are wasted. It can be tricky keeping different colour scraps separate - most of my techniques rely on surface treatment so it doesn’t matter too much if I end up with a random ball of indeterminate brown as no-one will know once it is buried under layers of paint, wax and powders! Even once baked rejected pieces can come in useful. I repurpose mine as backing pieces for collage, or cut up to use as mosaic tiles. I produce far more waste grouting a mosaic than creating a polymer clay bowl but that’s a dilemma for another day.

Health

The main additive used in polymer clay production is a liquid plasticiser that is added to PVC powder to make the product soft and pliable. If you do any research on the safety of polymer clay you will find horror stories about phthalate plasticisers, some of which are known endocrine disrupters that can cause cancerous tumours, birth defects, and other developmental disorders. Thankfully these types of phthalates are no longer used in polymer clay and are banned in both the European Union (1999) and the USA (2008).

Despite the ban on phthalates there are still residual concerns over the health implications of working with polymer clay. Like most things, follow the instructions and use common sense. Keep your oven clean, use separate utensils for clay and food, wash your hands after claying, and don’t eat the clay!

What about fumes? The odour during curing is certainly ‘unique’ but is not toxic and there is no reason to not use a domestic oven for baking clay. Burning the clay is a slightly different issue. Baking at too high a temperature can result in the release of hydrochloric gas, which can be an irritant to the eyes and upper respiratory tract. I’ve only done this once and that was a lesson learnt - the smell is not something you will forget in a hurry! If like me you confuse cooking your clay with cooking your dinner, turn your oven off, open a window, and go and breathe some fresh air and mourn the shrivelled mess that could have been your greatest creation.

Just looking at my art supplies there is a variety of solvents, cadmium, lead and iron oxides in paints, not to mention the selection of cutting blades and sharp prodding things. The bottom line is everything has some degree of risk and polymer clay, used in the proper way, is safe and not toxic.

Conclusion

It would be a tall order to argue for the sustainability of a by-product of the petrochemical industry, and I’m not going to do that. The resistance to degradation of polymer clay is however, in artistic terms, one of its benefits – I would argue that we should avoid making items that have short term fashion or novelty value only, and look at making pieces that are valued and endure, be they small and simple or grand opulent statements.

An aspect that unites many polymer clay artists is our love of recycling. One of my many obsessions is trawling second hand shops and recycling centres for pieces I can repurpose with clay and mosaic – old boxes and tins, battered tables and mirror frames, broken vintage glass and jewellery. Keeping all these things out of the rubbish dump and breathing new life into them has to be a good thing ethically.

I also mentioned earlier how we should always look for alternatives that are genuinely sustainable. Bioplastics, made from renewable biomass sources, is a huge growth area, though as yet there is not to my knowledge a bio-alternative to polymer clay available on the market. I don’t doubt that it will come though.

In the meantime I’m going to carry on using my polymer clay and hope that the pieces I create will be around for years to come. I’m also going to attempt some homemade clay (more in hope than expectation), and plan to experiment with using good old fashioned mineral clay in some of my pieces as an alternative – then I’ll just have the ethics of mining, toxic glazes and fuel consumption of the kiln to worry about!

March 2019