The Public Image of Plastics

Waste and litter is not the only concern of the public about plastics. There is enough truth in public criticisms of the performance of many household plastics products to concern the polymer industries. It is perhaps significant that rubber-based products such as motor car tyres, 

The user is left with the impression that plastics components have not been thoroughly tested in the working environment before being put on the market. Very often very complex equipment fails due to the deterioration of a relatively small but nevertheless vital polymer-based component. 

Paint and Coatings A mature industry in transformation, Prog. Polym. Sci., 1997,22,203-245. 

Durability and Aging of Geosynthetics, ed. R. M. Koerner, Elsevier Applied Science, 1989. 

Polymers and Ecological Problems, ed. J. E. Guillet, Plenum Press, 1973. 

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As already mentioned, much of the use for plastics just after World War II was as a cheap substitute for traditional materials, and in other cases the material was used for its novelty value. In many instances the result was detrimental to the industry and it required several years of painstaking work by the technical service departments of the major plastics materials manufacturers before confidence was regained in the use of plastics. Even today the public image of plastics is not entirely positive and the significant contribution of plastics to raising the standard of living and quality of life is not fully recognised. 

Moreover, new biomimetic materials generate new perspectives on nature and artefacts that could help change the public image of chemistry. The development of synthetic materials - synthetic dyestuffs in the late nineteenth century and synthetic textiles in the twentieth century - has been celebrated as the triumph of artificial over natural products. In contrast to synthetic materials of the plastics era, composite materials (though still artificial and even more artificial than the conventional plastics) have turned the chemist s attention back to nature. 

To return to the bad image of plastics in France, it is fed with the spectacle of littering in the open air, especially on the beaches or in landfills, whether wild or public. It is tme, up to now, that the performance of our collection systems has been poor, that landfills are misused and that our behaviors still leave something to be desired though, in rich countries, we have made tremendous progress. 

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