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You Gonna Eat That? It Could Become Plastic
Kaz Riprock writes "Jian Yu and associates at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute have been working on a system to convert food waste into plastic polymers. There is a CNN article that gives an overview of the process. More information on the anaerobic acidogenesis and aerobic synthesis at Dr. Yu's page at HNEI. This could be a really good step in the right direction, assuming it provides a cheaper source of plastic than current methods (to be accepted and highly regarded by the plastic industry)."
People point out plastic as an environmental problem because it is a cheap material,
often used in cheap (and sometimes, unneccesary) products.
Simply put: Plastic has low status and appeal.
And that's why it is an ideal target as an environmental problem.
Now I'm not denying that plastic *is* a problem, especially in landfills, where it degrades slowly.
However, if you burn it, that is a different matter.
Burning plastic gives you somewhere around 80-90% of the energy that burning the oil that it
took to make plastic, in the meanwhile the plastic has had an entire lifetime of practical use.
Somewhere around 1% of the worlds oil is used to make plastic, the rest?
It just gets burned up.
As I said, it is a problem, but it is NOT a major concern,
not when we still have oil power plants. (and SUV:s!)
(And if you ask me, this bad understanding of priority is one of
the enviromentalists' big problems)