Materials Bioplastic
MATERIALS BIOPLASTIC rom the Stone Age to the Iron Age to the Sleel Age, we bound to one molecules another. Most have a backbone of delineate society's epochs by their primary material tor cat- bon, linked with other elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen, and fabrication. Ours could be called the Age of Plastic. oxygen. We can synthesize polymers, but they also occur natu- Globally, we produce roughly 310 million tons of plastic all rally around and inside us, they are part of every each That is living organ- year. 83 per and ism. the most pounds person, plastic production Cellulose, abundant organic material on is earth, is a expected to quadruple by 2050. The material is everywhere, polymer in the cell walls of plants. Chitin is another abundant from clothing to computers, furniture to football fields, and al- polymer, found in the shells and exoskeletons of crustaceans and most all otf it is petro-plastic, made from fossil fuels. In fact, 5 to 6 insects. tree Potatoes, sugarcane, bark, algae, and all con- percent of the worlds annual oil production becomes feedstock shrimp tain natural polymers that can be converted to for plastic. plastic manufacturing. But the polymers that make up plastic Although petro-plastics now dominate the market, the ma- exist in everywhere nature, not as fossilized and ex- just forms, terial for the earliest plastics was plant cellulose. In the perts estimate that 90 percent of current plastics could be derived nine teenth century, playing billiards was de lor the well-to-do irom rigueur plants or other renewable feedstock instead.
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