| ▲ | paganel 5 hours ago | |
Also, you can't make plastics out of wind power or out of solar, you still need the "petro-" that's part of the petrochemical industry. | ||
| ▲ | cluckindan 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
You can use solar to convert CO2 into syngas and do a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis followed by polymerization to get plastics. | ||
| ▲ | zihotki 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
This is false, you can make many plastics without fossil sources (pla, bio-pet, bio-abs, etc). The only challenge is cost and scale - it's cheaper and easier to use existing processes. | ||
| ▲ | nswango 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
But making plastics using renewable energy and fossil hydrocarbons for feedstock does not exacerbate the greenhouse effect, unless you burn them when you've finished with them. Arguably plastics are a stable, cheap and useful carbon sink and if climate is the overriding ecological priority we should be making as many as we can and recycling as few as possible. | ||
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
You can make plastics out of cellulose, which is available from plant sources or organic (algae) bioreactors. It would take a while to retool the plastics industry to use organic sources, but it's not at all impossible. | ||
| ▲ | Zigurd 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Plastic packaging can be substituted. Engineered plastics are a tiny fraction of petroleum. | ||
| ▲ | jjk166 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Using renewables means you're burning up less of your plastic feedstocks. | ||