The day I had planned a classroom debate on plastic, I found myself after a car with a bumper sticker, which reads “Bain Plastic”. As soon as the car pulled in the campus, I decided to follow and invite the living to join the debate.
When I reached the car, a student was just out. He was wearing a polyester park. He had a plastic coffee mug in his left hand and he had a cell phone on his right.
I received his attention from a respectable distance, but he turned down my invitation. I asked her if she knows that the specific car has about 400 pounds of plastic. He did not, so I did not comment on the luxurious toy cat attached to the back window with the plastic suction cup.
I said bumper stickers were probably made of plastic. “Yes,” he said, “But you have to start somewhere.”
In my class debate, students needed to examine both sides. Yes, plastic is negative: some are made of rigid chemicals, there are many petroleum products, some are difficult to recycle or reuse (say that wind turbine blades or solar panels) and very garbage seem to be plastic. However, what is relevant is not that they have negative, but compare with plastic version options.
Garbage is mainly plastic, yes, but this is because people are mainly made of plastic for garbage for garbage. When I was growing up, the garbage was mostly paper wrappers, glass bottles and metal containers.
Plastic packaging is light, strong, easy to process and less expensive than paper and cellulose products. Remember the chocolate candy bar attached to aluminum foil, covered with a paper sheath?
Plastic bottles are better than glass, coated paper and metal in almost every situation. Not worrying about glass sharks with broken bottles is a big thing. For water (thin) or soda (thick), polyethylene is more economical to produce bottles made of terefthelets. A separate technique takes high density polyethylene and converts it to milk bottles. All plastic bottles weigh much less than the glass, which saves considerably on transportation costs.
When one of my classrooms argued on the shopping bag, I was surprised at how much the plastic (also known as a T-shirt bag) was. Paper bags require trees, have their own environmental production issues and are surprisingly more expensive to produce. Multi-utilization bags are more expensive and often wear out before additional costs are appropriate. This is not just the cost per bag. Racks you see plastic shopping bags in the store are part of a system that also saves on labor costs, which can lead to a rapidly moving checkout line.
Plastic straws can be “evil”, but they are what I want to enjoy a drink in a restaurant. I really do not want the spirit of either paper or stainless steel, as I drink. I know that I am not able to clean the stainless-steel straws properly. On an increase during epidemics, I have seen garbage straws during hiking in all my years.
Look around the next time when you are in your living room, kitchen, bedroom, doctor’s office or car. Plastic in the form of fiber, film and foam is everywhere.
Generally, plastic is being used because they are fundamentally better than options. Plastic can be blown into bottles in the form of glass. They can be excluded in pipes and other shapes. They can be injected into complex shapes. Some can be converted into fiber and clothing. Thermoforming can be used to make a single cup or full -sized boat. Varieties are endless.
This does not mean that I think plastic is always the best option. In my opinion, chopsticks should be made from wood. Plastic mailbox does not look perfect. The building blocks for toddlers should have wood with letters, numbers and fiction designs that decorate the sides. Lincoln log and tinkercase should be wood, but plastic work best for the Lego set.
Diversity and flexibility are good.
Mich Zimmer was an industry advisor specializing in plastic and chemicals. He included eight versions of “Thermoplastic focus in North America”.
