Plastics future uses

What has made these plastic products successful was that there were those that knew the behavior of plastics and how to properly apply this knowledge. Recognize they did not have the tools that make it easier for us to now design products. Now we are more knowledgeable and in the future it will... 

There is a simpler explanation. The evolutionary path that leads to humans has produced organisms with profoundly plastic, adaptable brains/minds and ways of living. Humans have created societies, and invented technologies and cultures. We, the inheritors of not merely the genes, but also the cultures and technologies of our forebears, are profoundly shaped by them in ways that make our future as individuals, societies, and species, radically unpredictable. In short, the biological nature of being human enables us to create individual lives and collective societies whose futures lie at least in part in our own hands. 

A still lower-cost route to PHAs is genetic modification of plants to directly produce the final polymer. Monsanto (and others) pursued this approach and is currently being cofunded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in a collaborative research project led by Metabolix. Switchgrass will be modified to produce PHAs, which can then be extracted from the plant material and processed to obtain a consistent composition and the desired material properties. The plant material remaining after PHA extraction can be used to produce fuels, power, or other products, creating the opportunity for a "plants as factories" biorefinery. Applications for polymers with properties similar to those of PHAs consume on the order of 13.6 million metric t annually, and it is possible that in the future PHAs will figure prominently in the plastics market. 

The consumption of each polymer is immediately mirrored by the consumption of the fillers used in this polymer. The most recent changes in PVC consumption were reflected in the consumption of fillers. At the same time, future trends and developments in fillers are more related to the advances of plastics as they replace many traditional materials. For plastics to give the required performance, new filler technology was required. Current developments allow us to predict some future directions in filler markets. These technologies will become more important ... 

Three intrinsically linked phenomena maintain the dark image of plastics in France the lack of information, a socio-cultural tendency to be wary of chemistry, and media dramatization. Unlike in Germans, chemistry is not an area that attracts ns. Polymer engineering is not understood by us and we concern about it. No matter the comfort and security that plastics constantly bring in all areas, regardless of the future solutions they represent - industrial plastics are seen as black sheep. Spontaneously, we do not give them any credibility. 

All of these concerns should be taken into account, but the requested analysis of risks should also be carried out in terms of risk-benefit assessments. It is thus important for society to recognize the developments in science and in industry in the field of polymers. It is not generally known that plastics consume only 4% of global oil production and that their widespread use makes it possible to save a much larger quantity. In addition to this, at the end of their life they produce less waste, because they are lighter (less than 1% of the total weight of waste in Europe). The study by Claude Duval (see Chapter 2) allows us to address the intimate link between plastic waste and the environment. Thus, despite appearances, plastics undoubtedly contribute to sustainable development, and are beneficial for the future, as Michel Loubry attempts to demonstrate (see Chapter 4). 

More recently, interest in life-cycle assessment is being superseded to some degree by interest in development of sustainable systems. Sustainability is perhaps a more useful concept than life-cycle assessment, since it avoids some of the complexities of determining, for example, whether a amount of air emission A is better or worse than y amount of water emission B. Rather, the focus is on whether goods are being produced, used, and disposed of in a manner that allows us to continue to produce and use them into the indefinite future. One intersection of sustainable development with plastics is increased interest in biobased plastics, since these likely come from renewable feedstocks, with potential for sustainable production, rather than from nonrenewable fossil fuels. Of course, recycling may also help make production systems more sustainable. 

These figures provide strong evidence tiiat die demand for plastic products will grow further in future. However, die majority of polymers on the market are petroleum-based products. Although the current price of cmde oil has returned to an affordable level since the price hike to US 147 per barrel in July 2008,... 

Jones, R. "US Independent Compounding—Past, Present, and Future," Plastics Engineering, May 1996. 

---