Modern man had always been searching for ways to improve his life. His quests lead him to look for substitutes for expensive materials like ivory and silk. Plastics came into being because of this chemical search by replacing natural materials with manufactured or synthetic material. In a sense, modern life will be quite difficult without plastics. Materials using plastics are plentiful including car parts and many items at home. Even modern medicine uses plastics such as in implants and dentures. Plastics are a highly-specialized branch of chemistry and have very broad applications that a new course was designed – plastics engineering.

accessories and plastic moulds

The beauty of plastics is its malleability. It has the ability to be formed or moulded into any shape or size you want. Chemically, plastics have the added quality of stability and durability. In fact, this is the main issue on the continued use of plastics – it is non-biodegradable and will stay long enough in the environment to cause litter and pollution.

There are new materials being tested to replace the petroleum-based plastics of today. These materials are organic similar to the early plastics made of cellulose (plant materials) and are environmentally degradable but for the moment are expensive to produce. Biodegradable plastics are on the way now. Two promising materials are derived from starch and fructose. Among several methods studied by scientists are degradation by exposure to sunlight, water, bacteria, enzymes or wind abrasion.
This food setting looks palatable except that it is entirely of plastics.

Egg moulds

This site delves into the role of plastics in our daily modern life. It also looks into new technologies in making plastic items such as rotational mouldings which is a less expensive manufacturing process compared to the traditional injection moulding process. This new manufacturing technique has several advantages although it has its drawbacks too.

http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/Plastics.htm
The above site explores all the issues concerning plastics disposal.

Packaging is the most common use of plastics but it is present in every sector of the economy. The graph above is that of the U.K.


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