And instead of plopping down several hundred million dollars to build a chemical plant that will only make one type of plastic for its entire life, our plants can make any type of plastic we feed them.

51H flexible plastics large packagings

50H rigid plastics large packagings

And sometimes they'll resort to what's known as the burn and sniff technique where they'll burn the plastic and smell the fumes to try to determine the type of plastic.

And out the end of that part of the process come little flakes of plastic one type, one grade.

We use a very highly automated process to sort those plastics, not only by type, but by grade.

I turn them into two and three dimensional pieces and sculptures and installations.

Eben Bayer Are mushrooms the new plastic?

It's ephemeral just like us.

Now because the plastics are so plentiful and by the way, those other methods don't lead to the recovery of plastics, obviously but people do try to recover the plastics.

(b) plastics drums and jerricans that

Closed loop recycling, in which plastics waste is used to make another product, thus carries significant environmental benefits, such as reduced energy and oil consumption. But the process of separating the petroleum based recyclable plastics from other kinds of plastics and solid waste is difficult, costly, and labor intensive, so only a small proportion is recycled.

It is down cycled and turned into lesser things, while a glass bottle can be a glass bottle again or can be used again a plastic bottle can never be a plastic bottle again.

Plastik

At the end of this process, we have a mixed plastic composite many different types of plastics and many different grades of plastics.

It's a bad thing that plastic breaks down into smaller little bits, because it's always still plastic.

It's plastic pollution.

The quality assurance programme should include a record of proper pre sorting and verification that each batch or recycled plastics material has the proper melt flow rate, density, and tensile yield strength, consistent with that of the design type manufactured from such recycled material.

He's given a little bottle massage, a little bottle medal.

Whenever possible, refuse single use and disposable plastics.

We accomplished that this morning by encasing him in a block of KL93, a new plastic material stronger than steel.

But with this new plastic explosive... a few ounces of which could blow up this whole building... and with Grace... we have the solution.

Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing.

And the very first CAD model we made, the surgeons were playing with the plastic model, couldn't quite figure it out.

You can't have plastic knives and swords and axes and all that kind of thing in a kindergarten classroom.

I'm also concerned about the plastic in the refrigerator, and I'm concerned about the plastic and the toxins that leach from plastic into us and into our bodies.

Moreover, most plastic products are made from so called petroleum based commodity thermoplastics. Given that a non renewable resource forms the basis of many plastic products most of which will not last long current plastics usage patterns are not sustainable.

Plastic just is not going to do it.

(b) plastics drums that

And if you really look into it, particularly when it comes to plastic bottles, most of it is only down cycled, or incinerated, or shipped to China.

It's not just that gyre of plastic that I'm concerned about it's the gyre of plastic in the supermarket.

And both in the production of plastic, the use of plastic and the disposal of plastic, the people who have the bull's eye on their foreheads are poor people.

It's a plastic bag.

The Dirt on Plastic Waste

In the US, the ERP is much higher for footwear of plastic, rubber or textiles than for leather shoes.

It's mostly many types of plastics and many types of metals.

Plastics have taken the place of many conventional materials.

Recycling of plastic in many developing countries means the incineration of the plastic, the burning of the plastic, which releases incredible toxic chemicals and, once again, kills people.

And in the process, we started recreating how the plastics industry makes plastics.

Now look at that plastic chair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Soybeans, yeah.

glass, plastic, terry cloth.

I like drinking from a stein.

We push that material to extruders where we melt it, push it through small die holes, make spaghetti like plastic strands.

And the last material I'm going to talk about today is plastic, and, of course, my toaster had to have a plastic case.