Plastic Facts - Information, Benefits and Negative Effects

Facts about Plastic

• Every piece of plastic that was ever produced still exists.
• Fathers of the modern plastic industry were chemists Leo Baekeland, Alexander Parkes, Jacques E. Brandenberger, Chemist Roy Plunkett and Daniel Fox.
• First plastic compounds were made by processing naturally created rubber plants. This process was abandoned after chemist managed to create recipes for fully synthetic plastic.
• The word “plastic” was introduced in 1925, approximately 100 years after first chemist started working with natural rubber.
• Before WWII the most popular plastic was Bakelite and its close cousin Catalin. They were used everywhere, from children toys to the parts for large WWII bombers.
• One of the last truly important plastic compounds that were discovered is Kevlar (1965)!
• In 2010, 31 million tons of plastic waste was generated only in United States - 14 million tons in containers and packaging, 11 million tons as durable goods and appliances, and almost 7 million tons as non-durable goods (plates, cups, cheap kitchenware, etc.).
• Eight percent of United States plastic waste is recycled, but category of bags, sacks and wraps has larger recycling rate of almost 12%.
• In the year 2002 only 360 million of bottles was recycled, out of 9.1 billion bottles that were disposed.
• Over 15 million plastic bottles are used in Great Britain every day, but only around 2.5% of European plastic bottles are recycled.
• Plastic bottles are made from two types of plastic – 23% of them are made from Polyethylene terephthalate (PET, also used for food packaging, cosmetics) and 62% of them are made from High-density polyethylene (HDPE, also used for milk, detergents, shampoos, bottled water, juices).
• Buried plastic materials can last for minimum of 700 years.
• Over 4 million plastic bottles is used by American every hour!
• Plastic represents 8% of total American waste weight, and 20% of its volume.
• 1050 milk jugs can be recycled into one 6-foot plastic park bench.
• Standard weight of one PET 2 liter bottle was reduced by 28% between 1970s and now (it went from 67 to 48 grams).
• U.S. annually creates over 9 billion plastic bottles. Around two thirds end up in landfills or incinerators.
• The largest plastic recycling facility in the U.S. is Wellman Inc, located in South Carolina. It annually process over 2.5 billion plastic bottles, turning them into polyester fiber compound known as Fortrel EcoSpun.
• Small plastic cup can take 50 to 80 years to decompose.
• 11% of household waste is plastic, and 40% of it is plastic bottles.
• Plastic bags, bottles, and other garbage that end up in the ocean kill around 1 million sea creatures every year.
• Plastic bags are one of the most common plastic items that are manufactured today – over 300 per person, per year.
• Recycling plastic is much more energy efficient than incinerating it.
• 9-15 billion of plastic shopping bags are used each year in Canada alone. On average, one of those bags is used for five minutes before it is discarded.
• Plastic waste can travel large distances over air and sea. Canadian plastic shopping bags are found as far as Scotland.
• In 2009, 2.45 billion of PET and HDPE bottles were recycled.
• Recycling one single plastic bottle saves enough energy to ring 60-watt light bulb for six hours!

Plastic Benefits - The Advantages of Plastic

Since its inception, plastic enabled countless advances in our industry and way of the life. Created to be light, durable, chemically resistant, non-reactive to outside influences, and easy to manufacture, plastic was a perfect building material for countless articles that are used not only by ordinary users in their daily affairs but also in aeronautics, construction industry, electronics, packaging, transportation, energy conservation, scientific components and other.

Here are some of the most important benefits of using plastic:

Building and construction industry – From the moment famous Bakelite appeared in the first decade of 20th century, plastic became one of the most used building blocks of modern construction industry. This is only surpassed by packaging industry, which uses more plastic than construction industry. The most common uses for plastic in construction is in pipes, valves, bathroom units, flooring, siding, panels, insulation, plumbing fixtures, windows, doors, railings, glazing and gratings. They are used so much because of their awesome abilities to resist corrosion, natural elements and are also very light and easy to handle.

Packaging - Versatile, durable, flexible, rigid, and light plastic was embraced by packaging industry with both hands. By employing various manufacturing techniques plastic can be shaped and molded into any desirable form, have any color, or any physical property. Plastic transport containers are not unly used for household items such as shatterproof bottles and child resistant packages, but also in medicine (biohazard waste disposal, sensitive containers, transport molds that hold their cargo in firm grip), research, and countless other fields.

Transportation – Plastic is very popular material that is today part of all transport vehicles on the world. Because of its toughness, durability, lightness, and ease of coloring, plastic can be found in fenders, trunk lids, bumpers, housing for headlights and mirrors, hoods, doors, wheel covers, and many more other places. By introducing plastic, manufacturers were able to significantly reduce the weight of their cars, airplanes and other vehicles, enabling them to be much more power efficient and easier to service. Off course, smaller means of transportations such as bicycles, roller skates, kayaks, canoes, skateboards, snowboards, surfboards, motorcycles have managed to use all that plastic can offer us. In public transportation, plastic is used almost everywhere – seats, handholds, carpeting, interior panels, and sometimes even polycarbonate windows.

Electronic – Thermal and insulation properties of plastic made it ideal to become backbone of the electronic industry. Because modern plastic recipes will not change its form after they are heated, manufacturers use plastic regularly for circuit boards, chips, coffee makers, mixers, microwave ovens, hair dryers and even refrigerators.

Recycling – Recycling plastic saves money and energy, reduces the amount of plastic in the landfills or seas, reduces the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are created during production of “virgin” plastic, and more.

Plastic Disadvantages - Negative Effects of Plastic

Today, you can hardly look around you and not spot some item that is made entirely from plastic or has some plastic ingredient. This only proves that from its inception up to now plastic has managed to become popular building material of millions of useful items, but it is not perfect. Plastic has several disadvantages that prevent it from becoming universal building block of modern human civilization, and because of that many governments strictly control its use and create complex law that govern its creation, recycling and environmental impact of waste plastic and chemicals that are used in its creation.

Here are some of the biggest disadvantages of plastic:

Durability – Plastic is light, moldable, sturdy, and can have countless forms, but one of the most known features is its durability. Plastic is artificially created polymer compound which can survive many centuries before nature is able to degrade it (some degrade into basic ingredients and some only divide into very small pieces). This troublesome ability of plastic doesn’t have great immediate impact on our environment, but its continuous dumping into seas and land will eventually create problems for future generations. Even with all this durability, plastic products are not indestructible and it cannot be used as a basic building block for everything we need.

Environmental Harm – Ever increasing plastic production since 1950s managed to saturate world with waste plastic product that can cause big effects on our environment. Decomposing of plastic product can last from 400 to 1000 years with newer “degradable” compounds, but before that degradation can happen waste plastic will continue to clog our waterways, oceans, forests, and other natural habitats that are filled with animals who mistake dangerous plastic for food. Chemical dangers are also high, because both creation and recycling of plastic produce toxic materials of many kinds.

Chemical Risk – Not only that creation and recycling of plastic can cause serious environmental risk, but some of the additives that are infused in plastic can cause permanent harm to our metabolism. Chemicals such as phthalates and BPA are widely used as an additive that prevents degrading of plastic structure, but they also interfere with our natural hormone levels which can cause serious problems to both males and females (lower testosterone levels in men, and premature girl puberty).

Choking Hazard – Plastic is one of the most popular building materials for small items. This is most evident in toy industry, where vast majority of children toys is manufactured with plastic. These toys and small plastic objects of many uses can easily get into children’s hands (especially babies and toddlers) that unknowingly put them in their mouth. To prevent these serious accidents, governments have implemented detailed set of rules which force manufacturers to clearly label their plastic products and warn users of the possible chocking potential. Another problematic plastic product that can cause serious injuries or death are plastic bags (grocery or trash bags)who can sometimes end up wrapped around children faces, disrupting their breathing.

Plastic Invention - Inventors of Plastic

Inventors of plastic are without a doubt persons who will always remain remembered in the history of our civilization. Their efforts enabled incredible expansion of industry and caused drastic changes in the way we live and work. Here are their life stories.

Who Invented Plastic?

Plastic products that we use today were created by countless chemists from all around the world, but the initial discoveries can be traced to several innovators who built a basis for modern day plastic industry. This is the story about them.

Alexander Parkes

Alexander Parkes is today remembered as father of plastic and first man who showcased to the world the wonders of this innovative material. Here you can find out more about his life, work and the way he invented plastic.

Leo Baekeland

Leo Baekeland reinvented the modern world by creating first fully synthetic plastic compound that swept across the world and enabled the formation of the modern plastic industry. Here you can learn more about his life, work and the way he invented his highly influential plastic product called Bakelite.

Plastic History - Origin of Plastic

Over the last 150 years, plastic products have managed to revolutionize our science, automobile industry, aerospace, transport, and medicine, enabling us to produce items of countless shapes, sizes and features. History of such influential product can be found on these pages.

History of Plastics

History of plastic started in the mid-1800 when chemist all round the world started experimenting with rubber, striving to eliminate natural ingredients from its recipe (natural latex) and wanting to make it fully synthetic product that can be mass produced all around the world. This exciting period of time soon gave birth to the first plastic compounds, which after decades of perfection finally entered mass production in early years of 20th century.

Since the dawn of modern humanity, people of many civilizations used natural rubber as a means of protecting their equipment and items from water and other natural elements, as well as building blocks of many useful articles. This natural rubber (mixture of organic compounds such as latex and water) was gathered from rubber producing plants, and therefore its production was greatly limited by natural resources. To combat this problem, many scientists started working on fully synthetic alternatives. With the help of the chemist who identified that building block of rubber were polymers, the first man—made plastic was ready to be produced.

First man who managed to produce plastic in a laboratory was Alexander Parkes(1813 - 1890), metallurgist and inventor from England. He spent his entire life working on various techniques of rubberizing items, and in 1950 he finally managed to combine organic material found in cellulose and other substances to form first man-made plastic called Parkesine. He immediately saw that plastic has much better abilities than rubber –it could be industrially produced in large quantities, easily molded when hot, sturdy and durable when cooled. Even though he did not manage to become rich man from his invention (his large scale manufacturing business failed after few short years of work, mostly because high price of plastic and imperfect recipe which caused Parkesine to easily break and be flammable), but his exploits served managed to introduce plastic to the general population and scientists in both Europe and North America.

First notable successor of Parkesine was John Wesley Hyatt‘s Cellulloid plastic, which was derived from cellulose and alcoholized camphor. In the beginning, celluloid was used as a substitute for ivory-made billiard balls in late 1860s, but they quickly went out of the style after initial recipe proved to be very flammable. This setback did not cause destruction of celluloid business because by late 1800s it became foundation and building block of movie and photography industry.

With plastic being mostly used only for specific purposes (film and photography), first years of 20th century finally brought an age of plastic that we know today with the introduction of Cellophane and first fully synthetic plastic compound called Bakelite. Created by the famous inventor Leo Baekeland (born and raised in Belgium, and then moved to United States in 1890s where he remained for the rest of his life), the compound he named Bakelite enabled for the first time true revolution of plastic and the birth of the modern plastic industry. With superior features, durability and ease to use, Bakelite soon found its way into thousands upon thousands of products in Europe and North America (from jewelry, to common items, construction, scientific instruments, packaging, automobiles and airplanes). After Bakelite, new and improved plastic products started appearing in regular schedule (Catalin, Plexiglas, Teflon, Nylon, etc.). The era of Bakelite finally ended after the end of WWII when chemist produced much more stable and durable plastic compounds (most notably ABS, Styrofoam and Lexan), which remained in use even to this day.

In modern society, plastic represents one of the basic building blocks of our industry, construction, common items, transport items, vehicle manufacture and science. No matter where you look you can find at least one plastic item, and because of that, governments all around the world are striving to found solution for plastic waste disposal. Large amount of disposable plastic products (bottles, plastic bags, etc.) are heavily controlled and manufactured in the way that recycling is easier and in some case even biodegradable.

History of Plastic Recycling

Plastic is one of the most popular building materials of modern human culture, but its widespread use brought us many problems and caused environmental dangers of unprecedented scale. Since its mass adoption in the 1950s, discarded plastic products have filled landfills and contained seas and earth with materials that will not break down for centuries and centuries. To combat this problem, governments of many countries around the world formed rules for recycling plastic, established industrial processes for transforming discarded plastic into useful materials, and educated communities to the benefits of recycling all around the world.

One of the largest recycling efforts of the 20th century happened of course during wars when governments demanded of their people to donate their unused metals, tires and even nylon, but the notion of recycling plastic came only after the environmental revolutions of 1960s. During those years people really started noticing the impact of plastic waste on environment, and started laying groundwork for future recycling efforts. First plastic waste recycling mill in the world was created in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania in 1972, marking the beginning for all future recycling plants. As years went by, government programs and eco-friendly communities slowly started to educate regular people into habit of recycling and forcing manufacturers to start producing easier to recycle plastic. Their efforts came to life during 1980s and 1990s with the adoption of PETE and HDPE plastic, which were designed with recycling in mind. These recyclable plastic products were introduced by Plastic Bottle Institute of the Society of the Plastics Industry and clearly marked on their containers by logo of triangle made of arrows.

The process of recycling plastic is not as simple as recycling paper, glass and metals, because the greater number of steps involved for extracting dyes, fillers and other additives that can be found in “virgin” plastic. First step in their recycling is sorting by the type of resin that is in their structure (seven basic types) and in some cases additionally sorted by color. After that, plastic is chopped into small pieces, cleaned to remove debris and small residue, melted down and compressed into pellets named nurdles. These small pellets are then transported to plastic processing plants where they are introduced into manufacturing process.

Because of the complicated recycling process and unwillingness of people to properly dispose of their unwanted plastic, recycling rates of plastic lag far behind of other items such as paper, glass and metal. In 2008 only 6.5% (2.2 million tons) of post-consumer plastic waste was recycled, 7.7% (2.6 million tons) was burned for energy and 85.5% (28.9 million tons) went to landfills.

Timeline of Plastic History

• 1284 – Oldest surviving historical record of naturally made plastic compounds from horn and tortoiseshell.
• 1823 – Macintosh discovered rubber. He used it to protect cotton from moisture.
• 1845 – Inventor Bewley produces natural rubber from plant gutta percha. This plant became used regularly during 19th century, especially to produce insulation for underwater telegraph cables.
• 1862 – Londoner Alexander Parkes unveiled first man-made plastic compound. He named it "Parkesine”, but it quickly disappeared from public use because of high costs.
• 1869 – Failure of Parkesine led to the creation of Xylonite by the hands of Daniel Spill. His company also went bankrupt after few years.
• 1869 – American inventor John W. Hyatt invented Celluloid, which entered mass production in 1872.This was successful plastic product.
• 1897 – Two German researches developed Galalith, a type of plastic that is still in use today (mostly as plastic buttons).
• 1908 - Jacques E. Brandenberger invented Celophane – light, non-reactive and easy to use plastic compound that become very successful after DuPont made it water-proof in 1927. It remains widely used even today.
• 1909 –New York chemist Leo H. Baekeland created first fully synthetic plastic product called Bakelite. It was received with great enthusiasm, and was used in everything, from jewelry to cars and airplanes. Original pieces of Bakelite plastics are now considered rare and precious.
• 1920s – Jewelry manufacturer Coco Chanel introduced jewelry made from Bakelite.
• 1920 – Creation of Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. This invention brought to the close tradition of cultivating plants who gave us natural rubber. PVC is most commonly used plastic product of the modern world.
• 1925 – The term “Plastic” was introduced.
• 1927 – After patent for Bakelite expired, Catalin Corporation started producing plastic “Catalin” with the same formula as Bakelite. Their 15 new colors proved to be very successful.
• 1931 – Plexiglas, strong and transparent type of plastic was invented in two different laboratories. It instantly becomes success.
• 1938 – Chemist Roy Plunkett discovered Teflon, very durable and resistant plastic that is today most commonly used in kitchenware.
• 1939 - Nylon was created, to the relief of all women in the world.
• 1946 – After World War II, chemist all around the world improved the formulas of Catalin and Bakelite, making them obsolete.
• 1948 – ABS was made, plastic which is today used in millions of products – from Lego pieces to golf club heads, musical instruments, car parts, and piping.
• 1953 – American chemist Daniel Fox invented a new type of polycarbonate resin thermoplastic that was very durable and almost bulletproof. Named “Lexan”, this plastic became instant hit and is used even today in various modern products, such as iBook, iPod and many others.
• 1954 – Styrofoam becomes available.
• 1965 – Chemist Stephanie Kwolek develops light, extremely resistive and durable plastic compound that is today known under the name of Kevlar. Today, this plastic is used by military and police in bullet resistive protective wear.
• 1998 – Bakelite bracelet under the name of “Philadelphia bracelet" reached the price of 17 thousand dollars at Treadway/Toomey auction.