In Class Experiment:
For our in class experiment, we tried to make a plastic alternative, bio-plastic from agar agar, glycerol and water. We measured each portion with a measuring spoon and mixed it in a glass cylinder and put it on a burner to heat it up. We heat it up to about 80 degree celsius and poured it into a flat pan and wait for it to dry. While we were heating the materials up, we had to stir the whole time which was pretty tiring.
Final Product!
After reading the this weeks reading, I realized that though bioplastics seems like it is a good alternative, however, it is still not the best. There are multiple problems that comes with bioplastic. Bioplastic production itself could result in a greater amount of pollutants, due to fertilizers and pesticides used for growing the crops and the chemical processing that needs to turn organic materials into plastic. Another hazard is that it actually needs high temperature to break down so there are only a certain amount of facilities in the world to break bioplastic down or else they could release methane when they end up in landfills deprived of oxygen. A more concerning issue is that since bioplastic is basically made out of food, there will be a fight in food production in terms of what amount of food can be eaten or made into plastic. The most important issue is money. Making bioplastics in general are a lot more expensive than making plastics out of fossil fuel. This is the ultimate reason why it is quite impossible to switch to bioplastic unless people could find a way to do it much cheaper than how plastics are made now.
Final Project Proposal:
For my final project, I would like to work with something along the lines of the extrusion machine that precious plastics has made. I believe there will be a huge demand for materials like the 3D printer material and just having strings of plastics in general would be helpful. Moreover, if plastic could become an alternative to sewing, then it would reduce a large amount of plastic waste.
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