Much of this article came from the Smithsonian Magazine written by Elizabeth Royte – to whom we owe our gratitude. Near Blair, Nebraska is the largest lactic acid plant in the world. Into one end goes corn, and out the other comes white pellets, which some say is the future of plastic. The substance is …
In August 2014, Russell Klein wrote an article which was published in TriplePundit; much of the information in this post was taken from that article. For the past 25 years, our modest national efforts to do-the-right-thing by recycling plastic products have suffered from widespread misunderstanding and even marketing disinformation. Don’t want to be part of the …
The Guardian, in early September 2017, released a report that microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world. What this means for the seven billion people on earth, no one yet knows. All the experts can agree on is that, given the warning signs being given by life in the …
The use of plastic bags is still bugging me. We use 1,000,000 plastic bags on this Earth every minute. According to The Earth Policy Institute, the plastic bag was invented in Sweden in 1962. The single-use plastic shopping bag was first popularized by Mobil Oil in the 1970s in an attempt to increase its market …
When plastic was introduced in 1869, it was advertised as being able to replace natural products like ivory and tortoiseshell in items such as jewelry, combs and buttons – so it would “no longer be necessary to ransack the earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer.”(1) What a success: Plastics are versatile …
So from last week’s post, you know that you want a durable, colorfast fabric that will be lovely to look at and wonderful to live with. What’s the best choice? I’m so glad you asked. You have basically two choices in fibers: natural (cotton, linen, wool, hemp, silk) or synthetic (polyester, acrylic, nylon, etc.). Many …
From last week’s blog post, we discussed how bio based plastics do indeed save energy during the production of the polymers, and produce fewer greenhouse gasses during the process. Yet right off the bat, it could be argued that carbon footprints may be an irrelevant measurement, because it has been established that plants grow more …
First we heard about the world’s biggest garbage dump – made up of the detritus of our time: plastic bottles, plastic bags, DVD cases – floating in our ocean. About 44 percent of all seabirds eat plastic, apparently by mistake, sometimes with fatal effects. And many marine species are affected by plastic garbage—animals are known to …
Polyester is a very popular fabric choice – it is, in fact, the most popular of all the synthetics. Because it can often have a synthetic feel, it is often blended with natural fibers, to get the benefit of natural fibers which breathe and feel good next to the skin, coupled with polyester’s durability, water …
Synthetic polymers have experienced almost exponential growth since 1950, and today about 5% of world oil production is used for that purpose. In fact, we will need 25% or more of the current oil production for making polymers by the end of this century. Some synthetic polymers are used to make fibers, and they have …
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