plastic

6Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE

The Cultural History Of The Plastic Pink Flamingo – From Kitsch To Park Avenue

In 1957, a 21-year-old art school graduate named Don Featherstone created his second major design for the Massachusetts-based lawn and garden decoration manufacturer Union Products: a three-dimensional plastic pink flamingo propped up by two thin, metal legs that could be plunged into soft dirt. Featherstone’s duck and flamingo ornaments sold in pairs for US$2.76, and were advertised as “Plastics for the Lawn.” They became simultaneously popular and derided in the late 1950s and remain a recognizable species of American material culture. Featherstone died this past June, but over five decades after he submitted his design, the plastic pink flamingo continues to grace American lawns and homes. While many are quick to label the plastic ornament as the epitome of kitsch, the flamingo has ac...

Turn Plastic Waste In Your Recycle Bin Into Profit

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY, VIDEO REELS

Turn Plastic Waste In Your Recycle Bin Into Profit

People will recycle if they can make money doing so. In places where cash is offered for cans and bottles, metal and glass recycling has been a great success. Sadly, the incentives have been weaker for recycling plastic. As of 2015, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled. The rest pollutes landfills or the environment. Saved from the trash heap and ready for transformation. Nathan Shaiyen/Michigan Tech, CC BY But now, several technologies have matured that allow people to recycle waste plastic directly by 3D-printing it into valuable products, at a fraction of their normal cost. People are using their own recycled plastic to make decorations and gifts, home and garden products, accessories and shoes, toys and games, sporting goods and gadgets from millions of free designs. This approach is...

After Wildfires Plastic Pipes Are Polluting Drinking Water Systems – It’s A Risk In Urban Fires, Too

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT

After Wildfires Plastic Pipes Are Polluting Drinking Water Systems – It’s A Risk In Urban Fires, Too

When wildfires swept through the hills near Santa Cruz, California, in 2020, they released toxic chemicals into the water supplies of at least two communities. One sample found benzene, a carcinogen, at 40 times the state’s drinking water standard. Our testing has now confirmed a source of these chemicals, and it’s clear that wildfires aren’t the only blazes that put drinking water systems at risk. In a new study, we heated plastic water pipes commonly used in buildings and water systems to test how they would respond to nearby fires. The results, released Dec. 14, show how easily wildfires could trigger widespread drinking water contamination. They also show the risks when only part of a building catches fire and the rest remains in use. In some of our tests, heat exposure caused more ...

Turning Low-Value Plastic Materials Into High-Value Molecules

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT

Turning Low-Value Plastic Materials Into High-Value Molecules

If you thought those flimsy disposable plastic grocery bags represented most of our plastic waste problem, think again. The volume of plastic the world throws away every year could rebuild the Ming Dynasty’s Great Wall of China – about 3,700 miles long. In the six decades that plastic has been manufactured for commercial uses, more than 8.3 billion metric tons have been produced. Plastics are light, versatile, cheap and nearly indestructible (as long as they don’t get too hot). These properties make them incredibly useful in an enormous range of applications that includes sterile food packaging, energy-efficient transportation, textiles and medical protective gear. But their indestructible nature comes at a cost. Most of them decompose extremely slowly in the environment – on the order of...