Sunday, September 28, 2008

Green plastics


Green Plastics, sometimes also called Bioplastics, are plastics that are biodegradable and are usually made mostly or entirely from renewable resources. Frequently there is also a focus on environmentally friendly processing. Green plastics are the focus of an emerging industry focused on making convenient living consistent with environmental stability.

Like all plastics, bioplastics are composed of a polymer, combined with plasticizers and additives, and processed using extrusion or thermosetting. What makes green plastics "green" is one or more of the following properties:

  1. they are biodegradable
  2. they are made from renewable ingredients
  3. they have environmentally friendly processing

Because different compounds can satisfy some or all of these criteria to different degrees, there are different "degrees of green" in green plastics. To evaluate how "green" a plastic material is, you need to ask three questions:

  1. how quickly can the plastic be re-integrated into the environment after it is no longer being used?
  2. how quickly are the ingredients that go into making the plastic created in the environment?
  3. how much pollution or waste is created during the process of actually making the plastic?

Traditional plastics fail on all three of these points.


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