“Plastic makes our modern life possible.” – American Chemistry Council
“Plastic is an irreplaceable part of our nation’s economy, contributing to nearly every vital segment of our manufacturing sector… and our lives. It’s essential to creating medical supplies, comfortable housing, personal safety equipment, a safer food supply, clean energy, and our family cars,” states the American Chemistry Council. They follow with, “Making and distributing plastic where and when it’s needed is vital to our ability to go places, deliver food, run a business, make a cell phone call, and fight disease. And it helps us drive down greenhouse gas emissions.”
This may seem counter-intuitive, particularly when considering the bad reputation the plastic industry has received in recent years. How can an industry known for landfilled waste actually drive down emissions and benefit the environment?
The truth is, there is more to the story than the narrative we’ve heard about plastics. Many in the plastics industry are working to reduce the number of single-use plastics and increase the amount of recycled plastic used in products by building closed-loop systems. For example, Petoskey Plastics works with several customers to purchase used film, recycle it and turn it into our GreenPE® recycled resin pellets. In turn, our GreenPE® is used in our products to provide customers with environmentally conscious options.
Plastics are everywhere and in everything because of the many benefits they provide. The use of plastics allows us to live better lives while contributing to sustainability. As a material, plastic is cheaper, lighter, and more versatile than most other alternatives. Plastic valves and pipes hold up against corrosion and are cheaper and easier to install than pipes made from metal materials. Additionally, using plastics in housing insulation makes our homes significantly more energy efficient and reduces heating and cooling costs.
In the automotive sector, plastic components in vehicles dramatically reduce weight and increase miles per gallon, saving the owner fuel costs and the environment from gas emissions. According to the American Chemistry Council, “Many plastic components can weigh 50 percent less than similar components made from other materials. Modern innovations mean today’s plastics make up 50 percent of a vehicle’s volume, but only about 10 percent of its weight.”
Plastics are essential in the medical field and have helped cut costs while enhancing the quality. Medical devices made with injection molded or extruded plastic provide design opportunities other materials cannot. Plastic use in medical devices has led to fewer infections, increased comfort and safety, and is cheaper for the patient.
“The use of this material not only reduces infection risk in gloves used in surgery for example, but also ensures devices and drugs haven’t been tampered with through packaging with seals,” reports Medical Plastic News.
While plastic manufacturers and consumers must work together to reduce excess waste, don’t forget all the benefits of using plastics instead other materials.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of plastic and educate yourself on the industry, check out these resources:
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Contrary to many uninformed individuals, plastic can actually help the environment in a wide variety of ways. While it’s common knowledge the plastic can be recycled and reformed through plastic molding techniques, there are still many more ways plastic is better for the environment than traditional materials such as paper or wood. The following examples are only some of the ways that plastic is helping the environment.
Paper products require a vast amount of resources to produce. In addition to the need to cut down large numbers of trees to produce paper products, the paper making process requires vast quantities of energy and water to function. In addition, paper making factories produce a large amount of waste. In addition, because paper products are less durable than plastic products, like those storage injection molding, they have to be replaced far more often.
An important advantage of plastic is the sheer variety of forms it can be recycled into. Today’s plastic bottles can be recycled and converted into tomorrow’s feedstock for a plastic molding system. Not only is this more environmentally friendly, but it also makes plastic a very flexible material for the industrial needs of the 21st century.
Because plastic is lighter and stronger than many other materials, it takes less plastic to handle any given task. This reduces the amount of material needed for a given purpose, which helps to reduce the environmental impact of plastic components.
In addition to being recycled into other objects, plastic can be converted into fuel. Not only does this recycle the plastic, it also reduces the amount of fossil fuels that have to be extracted from the earth. Not only does this reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction, but can also help keep fuel prices low.
Whether it is used in plastic molding or as a drink container, plastic is a very long lasting material. Because of this, there is less need to continually throw away plastic components. This not only reduces the amount of trash that is generated, but also reduces the need for the production of replacement components. Because of this, the durable nature of plastic reduces both waste and production related pollution.
A major problem facing America is loss of available recycling and landfill space. However, because plastic can be easily compressed, it are well suited to efficient storage, whether the goal is for permanent disposal or temporary storage before the material’s recycling for another purpose, such as use in an injection molding process.
Finally, light weight plastic compounds have helped to dramatically improve the fuel economy of the nation. Whether it is increasing a car’s mileage by using a plastic body, or simply reducing the weigh of a truck’s cargo, plastic helps reduce the amount of energy needed to get people to work and goods to market.
Ultimately, plastic is an excellent tool to help reduce mankind’s impact on the environment. In fact, in many respects plastic is far more environmentally friendly than any other material commonly used by man. If you’d like to recycle plastic and bring a design to life using plastic molding techniques, contact Superior Plastics – we’d love to be a pert of your environmentally friendly, creative process!
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