Plastic is one of the most popular material for making things and is extremely popular. However there are some significant disadvantages of Plastic that are becoming more and more apparent due to the focus on environment and climate change. Some biggest disadvantages of Plastic are as follows
- Durability: Plastic is light, mold able, sturdy, and can have countless forms, but one of the most known features is its durability. Plastic can survive for many centuries before nature is able to degrade it
- Environmental Harm: Since Plastic takes a long time to degrade it continues to clog our waterways, oceans, forests, and other natural habitats. These are consumed by animals who mistake them for food and then die. Recently 9 deer were found dead in a famed park in western Japan after eating plastic bags
- Choking Hazard: Plastic is one of the most popular building materials for small items. These toys and small plastic objects of many uses can easily get into children’s hands (especially babies and toddlers) that unknowingly put them in their mouth.
So what do we do about it? Banning it is not a great idea till we have replacement options available. For example plastic straws are banned in a lot of places but paper straws don’t last long enough to be useful.
A Canadian company called JD Composites has a potential solution to the problem. They have created a process where they took about 612,000 plastic bottles and shred them. The result is then melted and injected with gas to create a plastic based foam. This foam is them shaped into 5.9 inch thick panels which are then used in house construction. Based on the testing done at a certification facility these panels can withstand winds of over 300 miles per hour (hurricane strength) and as an added bonus they also provide better insulation. If the process becomes mainstream it will keep a large no of bottles (and plastic) out of landfills. While this is a positive step there are still a lot of certifications/studies etc that would need to be done on the process to ensure there are no unexpected side-affects from the process. We don’t want to be in a situation like we were with asbestos where we found out that it causes cancer a few decades after it was put in a large no of homes & offices as insulation.
A sample three bedroom home was created near the Meteghan River in Nova Scotia and is actually up for sale right now. If the builders are unable to find a buyer they are planning to list it on Airbnb and see if that creates enough buzz about the process for it to become mainstream. I hope that this process becomes mainstream quickly so that we can reduce the amount of crap we are putting in the garbage.
Source: This Hurricane Proof House Made From 612,000 Recycled Plastic Bottles Can Withstand 326 MPH Winds
– Suramya