was plastic made for greater good or like discovery or was it for the worse scince its not biodegadable and its poluting our world?
Its a question of proper use vs. abuse. Plastics were originally developed as substitutes for rubber, wood and other natural substances that wre being depleted. That's good. It can substitute for metals in many lightweight applications with long life, lower cost and savings in energy. Look at car parts as an example. That's all good. But we live in a society where we throw things away. It is less expensive to buy new compared to repairing the old. So our landfills are filling up with non-biodegradable plastics. I've seen people toss empty soda bottles out of their car windows as they were driving. That's all bad. Recycling is the solution, and not being abusive of our environment.
Lets see, what did we have before plastic. Wood! We used an incredable amount of it and cut down major forests before plastic replaced a large part of what we used the wood for. Don't forget, all of the dumps combined could fit into an area 40X40 miles. If we could move it easily, trash could be dumped there almost indefinitely. Doesn't seem so bad that way. An intelligently run landfill will have removed alll recyclable glass, (need a glass plant nearby to be economic) all recyclable metals, (separation is easy with convict labor) (thats the way Florida does it) the 3 major forms of plastic (need buyers for each) and the mix put into a lined area and capped. Intelligent use of the material will occur when controlled amounts of water (and maybe bugs) are added and the methane from decomposition is removed and used. Everything we do with oil can be done (not economically) with proper processing of coal. The good news is that gargage can now be made into an oil. The methane into plastics. Please don't confuse biodegration and poluting. A piece of glass in a dry environment will last thousands of years and when it does degrade, it doesn't pollute (unless it has lead or another heavy metal in it). As soon as plactic becomes too expensive, there will be something to take it's place.
I guess for the greater good, although it is ruining our world I supose plastic is just a fantastic material that will be used till we find a replacement, although scientists arent really giving it there best shot. I think that plastic as improved our world and had indirect help on the environment, for example it is a light weight material so cars and lorries ect... can run faster because a majority is made of plastic.
People always are on plastic's case about not breaking down in the environment but I want to make 2 points: 1] most plastics could be (and some are) recycled and/or recovered and converted into some other useful material. 2] If plastic is dumped somewhere it will stay there, at least it doesn't break down and release potentially harmful materials into the environment. So yes, It doesn't go away, but it isn't going to hurt anything either. Things that are far worse in terms of pollution when dumped are nicad/mercury cells, old car batteries, mercury switches, wood scraps treated with CCA, waste solvents, electronic trash such as old curcuit boards with lead solder, old car engine oil (usually contaminated with arsenic, anitmony, tin, lead, ect from bearings, old paint which often contains lead, chromium, cadmuim compounds etc. When this stuff breaks down these materials can spread through the soil/water table and contaminate a much larger area than the original dump site. It is very expensive and time consuming to clean up these messes after the fact! I If, after a 100 years, we figure out what to do with all that plastic we threw out, we can dig it up and it will still be there right where we put it!
