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It should be clear to any developed nation's citizens that they are enveloped by plastics.
Bottles, bags, paints, TVs, flashlights, hockey sticks, cell phones, carpet weave, light switches,
even book covers. All these things can be made of or contain plastics, and I shouldn't have to tell
you that this tiny list isn't even 1% of its myriad forms. Even the school desk of the humble
college I attend as of this writing is made of only two things: Metal and Plastic. However, what
most of the aforementioned citizens don't know is where plastic comes from, how its made, and
why this ubiquitous might disappear. Bad enough for the material needy, worse still for those
who enjoy modern medicine seeing as 100% of all non-herbal pills use plastic to hold together,
release at the right times, and even protect it. Petroleum is the reason a lot of things in our
modern lives function - and plastic is no different. When petroleum is gone, plastic production
will be too, and to beat the most dire of predictions of oil's staying power we'll have to come up
with something fast. I'll be looking at the most well developed and promising paths to stop the
Nearly all plastics today still use the same method since their conception. Petroleum,
coal, and natural gas all contain hydrocarbon monomers taken out during refinement processes.
The monomers can be linked together to form polymers. They may be linked by open carbon
bonds or by ridding the monomer of one or more hydrogen atoms in favor of other atoms (or just
open carbon space), changing its properties to suit our designs. The polymer fabric is then
shredded into "pellets" to be melted down and shaped into a manufacturer's wishes. The pellet
system is very helpful to recycling, allowing for easy dismantling that costs only 2/3 the energy
Despite the advantages, plastics have the lowest recycle rate of all materials. Lying at
only 6.9%, plastic has just 1/3 the recycling rate of the second lowest major material, glass,
21.8% (Sustainable Plastics?). PVC (PVC pipes, linoleum tiles, credit cards, cooking oil bottles,
siding, shower curtains), the most harmful plastic yet made, is in fact not recyclable at all. No
matter the solution to the plastic-petroleum problem, recycling what we have already made
should be a top priority. Emily Lupton suggests a national mandate similar to one already passed
in a few states.
"The basic provision of such a bill would be an initial small charge on certain plastic
containers when purchased, perhaps 5 or 10 cents, which would be refunded when the
containers are returned to a recycling center. In the 11 states with bottle bills, there are
higher rates of recycling than in other states. If this method were adopted nationally, the
mixing bioplastics and plastics in the recycling process, and the two are difficult to differentiate
in the already labor-intensive sorting of the different types of plastic (you know, the 3 arrows
with the number in the middle). For the time being bioplastics are better left to a "commercial
It is not at all ridiculous to presume that a 100% recycling rate of plastics should be
infinitely reusable, disregarding PVC (and others that release harmful and uncapturable
molecules) and "Thermally-Set" plastics (which cannot return to pellet form, their completely
and the occasional never-to-be-found-again littering, we could simply phase them out with other
new-found compounds (biomaterials or otherwise). If done right, this could cut the entire future
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impact that plastics have on our dwindling oil reserves. As it stands, about 8% of the world's
annual withdraws are used for plastics: 4% as "feedstock" material, and another 4% used for the
energy to make it (Umbra Fisk). At a meager 6.9% recycling rate, its easy to see the original 107
million pounds of plastic produced in North America alone (Peril of petroleum) as a completely
As already mentioned above, bioplastics are better left to the trash, and not all of them
can even biodegrade. If you ask what a bioplastic is, you wont really find a good answer. If you
ask what is a bioplastic's purpose, however, then the answer is singular and simple. Renewable
source plastics. In order to achieve the variations of use that plastic enjoys, they have to tinker
with myriad ideas, always involving some kind of renewable biomass (something that can be
grown in mass) and even genetically modified organisms to succeed; lending itself to the
confusion of what a bioplastic even is, since its harder to pin down its creation and ultimately it's
make-up. A good example would be the story of Anthony Sinskey and Oliver Peoples in One
Word: Bioplastics. Sinskey sequenced the genes of R. eutropha in 1984, which turned out to be a
polyester — starting with only sunlight, water, and a carbon source." In 1994 Sinskey and
Peoples founded Metabolix and set out to ramp up this unique attribute. Using now dated
metabolic engineering and 15 years of development they succeeded in making a strain of E. coli
that could produce PHA "at levels several-fold higher than [the] naturally occurring bacteria"
(One Word).
With all the offshoots of bio/earth-friendly ideas branching out in confusing directions, it
is easy to see why no single good idea has taken hold of the markets and revolutionize our plastic
use. A more direct method is being researched by LS9, the Renewable Petroleum Company™. In
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2007 LS9 received 5 million dollars in start-ups for their path: Synthetic Petroleum (Biofuels
start-up). Basically, make oil. Synthetic Petroleum, being that it is petroleum, would provide
more energy that ethanol, and supposedly provide it with a lesser carbon foot print than it's
ground dug ancestor. However, LS9 isn't just trying to make new petroleum, but use "synthetic
biology" to get it done. Essentially, rather than modify and feed an organism to work as a
miniature factory, they'll replicate the processes organisms use in more traditional ways. As the
article Biofuels start-up nabs $5 million in funding, likes to put it: "In a sense, LS9 will make
imitation petroleum with imitation animals." LS9 didn't completely narrow it's sights however.
On January 28th, 2010 LS9 - in conjunction with Keasling Lab at the DOE’s Joint BioEnergy
Institute - announced that they could make renewable diesel in a one-step process.
renewable fuel, eliminating the two-step procedure of using acids or enzymes to extract
sugars, and then fermenting sugars into fuel — is considered a critical path element in
driving down the costs of cellulosic biofuel towards cost parity with gasoline, and has
been widely described as “the holy grail of biofuels”." (JBEI, LS9, CBP)
On a personal note pretreated counts as a step, but I won't fight it here. Once again, E.
coli came to the rescue, this time designed to secrete diesel which floats to the surface to be
harvested; showing that LS9 isn't entirely stuck in their traditional concepts. Using this new
'Consolidated bio-processing', LS9 will continue to pursue straight petroleum. The ability to be
built anywhere and cut down on transport costs, undercut ethanol and lower the price of foods
used to make ethanol, and requiring no change in current vehicular engines, would make this
are two reasons for this: 1) It's already been said that 8% of the annual petroleum goes to
plastics, and we obviously don't need more, so it can and will go to fuel. 2) It's already been
proven that we don't actually require any more plastics other than replacements for the harmful
and unrecyclable, solidifying that more petroleum can't solve petroleum's problems. Case in
point for reason number one, and case in point that we truly are a wasteful band of creatures can
be seen in Justin Berton's article Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of
Pacific Ocean. This "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is roughly the size of Texas, estimated to
weigh 3.5 million tons (to put that number in perspective, that's 7000000000, or 7 billion,
pounds), and has been growing since the 1950's. 80% of the litter comes from the land, though it
is disturbing to read that "ships drop the occasional load of shoes or hockey gloves into the
waters (sometimes on purpose and illegally)" (Toxic Stew). As Chris Parry, public education
program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco said, "That's what
makes a potentially toxic swamp like the Garbage Patch entirely preventable" (Toxic Stew).
"Sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Birds swoop down and swallow
indigestible shards of plastic. The petroleum-based plastics take decades to break down,
and as long as they float on the ocean's surface, they can appear as feeding grounds.
"These animals die because the plastic eventually fills their stomachs," [Warner Chabot,
vice president of the Ocean Conservancy] said. "It doesn't pass, and they literally starve
Both Chabot and Parry agree that it simply cannot be cleaned up. They also appear to
agree that banning plastics as food packaging and bagging is one of the main ways to cut down
on the amount of plastic making its way to the ocean. Though I cannot argue that it wouldn't
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help, I do argue that this would hardly be a problem if humans didn't idiotically litter in the first
place. Other than the harmful types, plastic has never been the problem. It has been, like so many
other things we've discovered, simply been used incorrectly and without caution. Fortunately
Chabot saves himself, adding, "or require the substitution of biodegradable materials, increase
A synthetic, sustainable oil would effectively end the extinction of plastic as we know it,
assuming enough factories were made around the world since they will likely want to use it more
for jet fuel and cars first, plastics second. Bioplastics wont require petroleum at all, will very
likely be able to degrade in your home garden in the near future, and excitingly may be able to be
recycled and mixed with original plastics. And finally recycling, which is better in every way to
making plastic, requires no research or scientific breakthroughs, and may have prevented/still
can prevent the notion that plastics aren't sustainable on their own. They remain unsustainable
because we throw it away and make more. As I said before, it's feasible to nearly bring plastic
production to stand still and expect plastic to be around for a lengthy amount of time. If you
thought 107 million pounds was an "unnecessarily and unacceptably high number", then try this
on for size: "Every year, more than 540 billion pounds of plastic are produced worldwide" (One
Word). It is clear to me that the simplest, easiest, and most efficient way to solve the 'Plastic-
Petroleum Problem' is to just recycle it. Even out of these amazing advancements in technology
my pick is with recycling, and in the near future the rest of the world might be forced to agree
with me. But as a thought experiment, what would happen if we used all three? Synthetic Oil
factories around the world would decrease the price of gas, especially to anything that flies, and
allow us to better sustain it while ethanol and other replacement fuels are being perfected. More
replacement fuels, freeing up their strangling hold on our farms and reducing the cost of food
practically worldwide. Original oil harvesters can still produce on a less accelerated rate, and will
likely be the main producers of non-recyclable plastics. With a new recycling management
system, possibly made nation wide, with more recycling plants, plants with the ability to recycle
all the different types and not just 2 or 3, and a more efficient system set up much like water and
electricity, all of your water bottles, TVs, computers, cell phones, could all come right back in
your house hold in newer and advanced forms. This leaves Bioplastics with the freedom to cast
off its cripplingly large number of offshoots and research paths to narrow their search on how to
rid the world of harmful and non-recyclable plastics with eco-friendly and bio-degradable ones
that still perform their advanced functions. The pellets of the original plastics will finally
disappear, but not for hundreds of thousands of years, and if we have an earth left to live on,
Works Cited
<http://www.sustainablebiomaterials.org/index.php?q=node/111>.
Berton, Justin. "Continent-size Toxic Stew of Plastic Trash Fouling Swath of Pacific Ocean -
SFGate." Featured Articles From The SFGate. 19 Oct. 2007. Web. 30 Apr. 2010.
<http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-10-19/news/17266845_1_ocean-debris-great-pacific-
garbage-patch-plastic-bags>.
Fisk, Umbra. "Umbra on Oil and Plastic | Grist." Grist | Environmental News, Commentary,
Kanellos, Michael. "Biofuels Start-up Nabs $5 Million in Funding - CNET News." Technology
start-up-nabs-5-million-in-funding/2100-11392_3-6166790.html?tag=mncol;txt>.
Lane, Jim. "JBEI, LS9 Reengineer E.coli to Produce Renewable Diesel Directly from Biomass;
CBP Arrives in the Drop-in Sphere." Biofuels Digest - Biofuels, Biodiesel, Ethanol,
Algae, Jatropha, Green Gasoline, Green Diesel, and Biocrude Daily News. 28 Jan. 2010.
reengineer-e-coli-to-produce-renewable-diesel-directly-from-biomass-cbp-arrives-in-the-
drop-in-sphere/>.
q=node/90>.
Myers, Jack. "How Is Plastic Made from Petroleum? - Science Questions - HighlightsKids.com."
<http://www.highlightskids.com/Science/ScienceQuestions/h1sciQmakingPlastic.asp>.
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Oseguera, Osa. "Beyond the Age of Innocence In Bioplastic : Greentech Media." Green
Technology | Cleantech | Green Energy - News, Research, & Resources. 24 Mar. 2010.
innocence-in-bioplastic/>.
"PVC: The Poison Plastic." BE SAFE Precautionary Campaign. Web. 27 Apr. 2010.
<http://www.besafenet.com/pvc/Our_Health_and_PVC.html>.
Trafton, Anne. "One Word: Bioplastics." MIT. 17 Nov. 2009. Web. 27 Apr. 2010.
<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/bioplastics.html>.