Plastics Over Time

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Plastics Over Time
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(No Transcript)
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History of plastic
Parkesine -1862
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1955

• LIFE Magazine article Throwaway Living
• New idea waste saves time

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Supply
Production
Recovery for recycling
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Demand
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Consumption
The U.S. consumes as much oil as
Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Luxembourg
Bulgaria Czech Republic Denmark Finland France
Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy K
azakhstan Lithuania Netherlands Norway Poland
Portugal Romania Russia Slovakia Spain Sweden
Switzerland Turkey Turkmenistan Ukraine United
Kingdom Uzbekistan
COMBINED!
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Plastic bags production

• 1974 U.S. Retail giants Sears and J.C. Penney
  switch to plastic shopping bags
• 1977 U.S. Grocery stores begin offering plastic
  bags
• 1.2 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each
  year
• ? greater than 1 million bags per minute
• Average use before disposal 12 minutes

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Plastic bagscosts

• Ingestion of plastic by sea turtles is
  increasing.
• 12 million barrels of oil are used to make
  plastic bags for the U.S. each year.
• In San Francisco alone, 8.5 million was spent
  annually to deal with plastic bag litter.

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Toothbrush

• 3500 B.C. Egypt wooden chew stick
• 1000 A.D. China ivory handle and boar bristles
• 1780 A.D. England first mass-produced
  toothbrush is made out of cattle bone and pig
  hair bristles
• 1938 A.D. nylon replaces animal bristles

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Contact lens

• 1887 Germany first lenses made of blown glass
• 1888 Switzerland and France first use of
  contact lenses to correct optical defects
• 1936 United States first construction of
  plastic contacts

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Food wrap

• 1851 France wax paper invented by Gustave Le
  Gray for use in photography later used for food
  wrap
• 1933 U.S. Saran wrap accidentally discovered by
  Ralph Wiley 1st sprayed on military planes and
  to cover upholstery
• 1953 U.S. Dow Chemical Co. designs Saran cling
  wrap for household use

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File folder paper or plastic?
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Surfboards

• 400 A.D. Polynesia surfboards originate and
  weigh 77200 lbs
• 1926 U.S. Tom Blake designs a hollow surfboard
  from redwood trees
• 1946 U.S. Pete Peterson designs the first
  plastic board using fiberglass
• 1949 U.S. Bob Simmons creates boards with a
  styrofoam core

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Coffee cup

• Coffee cups can be made from just about anything
  ceramic, metal, paper or styrofoam.

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Drink carrier
1950s Aluminum
1960 Plastic 6-pack ring
1940s to present Cardboard
1930s1940s Wooden crate
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Drinking straw

• First drinking straws were hollow stems of
  natural rye grass
• 1888 U.S. Marvin Stone makes the first paper
  straw
• 1960s plastic straws replaces paper ones

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Music recording

• 1877 U.S. Thomas Edison makes recordings on the
  surface of a piece of tinfoil wrapped around a
  rotating phonograph cylinder
• 1888 U.S. Emile Berliner designs the
  disc-shaped gramaphone record out of vulcanite
  (hard rubber)
• 1962 Netherlands Philips produces cassette
  tapes made of plastic
• 1982 Japan and Netherlands Philips
• and Sony launch plastic compact disc