Green Plastic Video Reflection

Questions:

How are these plastics being developed?

Plastics used every day in our lives come from what is called "oil substance" or what I believe corn crops, sugar substances. The green plastics we see today are carbon containing compounds. The combination of molecules of polyactic acid creates oligomers which produces green plastic resources. The good parts about the green plastics are that it is eco friendly which means it is available to recycle or reused.

What makes these plastics "green?"

For instance corn crops are resources that are eco friendly to our world. No matter how much we use, the corn usage plastics are not going to damage the world (probably). By producing green plastics, it won't require too much money and process of damaging our circumstances. These are recyclable and biodegradable; also I think the video mentioned that 10 years later 20% of the entire plastics will be bio-plastic/eco friendly ones.

What are some issues with plastics that were mentioned?

As we receive benefits/advantages we also take disadvantages, the problem that people have to fix is being efficient. It is good to produce crops such as corns but if we produce more than what is needed then there will be no food left for us to consume. Another reason is to grow the corn crops, people need to give a lot of materials. What I mean is that, it takes too much credit to grow crops such as packaging, growing crop materials, fertilizers etc. If we tend to utilize the bio-plastics all the time then there will be no space for us to live unless we live with crops. By harvesting the crops, there will be a lot of necessity. Tractors have to use up oils which will produce carbons, the world will be polluted.

How might these green plastics change packaging practices?

This now links to Human Footprint video. In present days, people tend to use so many materials, which later on the amount of packaging and tools we use will dominate the world. By using bio-plastic materials, we can reduce the amount of paper bags and save the world. Although this might not be the best idea, we can save more money and we can develop further for the green plastic project.