Eliminating Plastics

Not using plasitcs is great as a decision at the personal level (for health) as well as the community level (difficult to recycle--plastic bags complicate the sorting machines at recycling facilities--and impossible to recycle 100%, adds a lot of bad things to the environment/rivers/soil/our food).

TIL in this article that Agilyx will be reducing plastic to it's components. It's like the ring from Lord of the Rings that needs to be "un-made." That's what Agilyx is doing. Hey, it may be a good idea to invest in that company. I don't know if it's possible - just an idea. Apparently Agilyx sells to oil refiners - they generally use the crude (or in this case synthetic) oil to produce such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas. Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. McGuire, but the future won't involve plastics.



As I touched on earlier and this article confirms, "about 7 percent of the world's oil supply is used to make plastics."

Also, I mentioned above that plastic is impossible to recycle 100% like paper or metal; it degrades over time. With each iteration, there is a release of toxic chemicals: phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), mercury, and perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), among others. These chemicals can lead to birth defects, cancer, diabetes, and can affect child development.

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How wonderful a world it would be if we didn't mine for oil, but instead use plastics to fuel current cars until they get replaced by electric options (yes, producing electricity uses a tiny bit of petroleum, but not much), as this graphic shows:



Unfortunately, natural gas, coal, petroleum, and nuclear are non-sustainable forms of energy. With research into biofuels, even they can be replaced.

I'm looking forward to my bike ride commute back home today.