Addicted To Plastic 2009 Part 1 of 6

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Uploaded by on Jul 27, 2011

Produced and Directed by Ian Connacher
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/atp.html
This video may contain copyrighted material & is the property of the respective authors, artists and labels & is provided for educational purposes only.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_rS1WJL6so
Reveals the history and worldwide scope of plastics pollution, investigates its toxicity and explores solutions.

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs. Monomers of plastic are either natural or synthetic organic compounds.

The word plastic is derived from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos) meaning capable of being shaped or moulded, from πλαστός (plastos) meaning moulded.It refers to their malleability, or plasticity during manufacture, that allows them to be cast, pressed, or extruded into a variety of shapes—such as films, fibers, plates, tubes, bottles, boxes, and much more.

The common word plastic should not be confused with the technical adjective plastic, which is applied to any material which undergoes a permanent change of shape (plastic deformation) when strained beyond a certain point. Aluminium which is stamped or forged, for instance, exhibits plasticity in this sense, but is not plastic in the common sense; in contrast, in their finished forms, some plastics will break before deforming and therefore are not plastic in the technical sense.

There are two types of plastics: thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers. Thermoplastics are the plastics that do not undergo chemical change in their composition when heated and can be moulded again and again; examples are polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Thermosets can melt and take shape once; after they have solidified, they stay solid.

The raw materials needed to make most plastics come from petroleum and natural gas.

Plastic is polluting the oceans. There are an estimated 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre of the world's oceans. Much of it is concentrated in a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, killing a million sea-birds and 100,000 marine mammals yearly.

Plastics can be classified by chemical structure, namely the molecular units that make up the polymer's backbone and side chains. Some important groups in these classifications are the acrylics, polyesters, silicones, polyurethanes, and halogenated plastics. Plastics can also be classified by the chemical process used in their synthesis, such as condensation, poly-addition, and cross-linking.

Other classifications are based on qualities that are relevant for manufacturing or product design. Examples of such classes are the thermoplastic and thermoset, elastomer, structural, biodegradable, and electrically conductive. Plastics can also be classified by various physical properties, such as density, tensile strength, glass transition temperature, and resistance to various chemical products.

Due to their relatively low cost, ease of manufacture, versatility, and imperviousness to water, plastics are used in an enormous and expanding range of products, from paper clips to spaceships. They have already displaced many traditional materials, such as wood, stone, horn and bone, leather, paper, metal, glass, and ceramic, in most of their former uses.

The use of plastics is constrained chiefly by their organic chemistry, which seriously limits their properties, such as hardness, density, heat resistance, organic solvents, oxidation, and ionizing radiation. In particular, most plastics will melt or decompose when heated to a few hundred degrees Celsius.[7] While plastics can be made electrically conductive, with the conductivity of up to 80 kS/cm in stretch-oriented poly-acetylene, they are still no match for most metals like copper which have conductivities of several hundreds kS/cm. Plastics are still too expensive to replace wood, concrete and ceramic in bulky items like ordinary buildings, bridges, dams, pavement, and rail-road ties.

Useful links:
http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/environment/cycle-plastic/
http://www.dancewithshadows.com/business/pharma/plastic.asp
http://www.earthresource.org/campaigns/capp/capp-background-info.html

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  • nice ditch weed on the first 3 seconds

  • The Roman Empire was defeated by their rampant use of slavery, abortion and contraception. Julius Caesar has an incredible speech about this condemning it. Lead in the pipes certainly didn't help either.

  • Finally, after all those years of having plastic bags so nicely pushed forward at the supermarket, even doublebagging ...comes the video. Bringing a bag (reusing) kinda got around that, reusing vegtable bags (I guess reusing vegtable bags works here) works too, but I don't think a single mother is going to spend her time on all this. Plastic can't be completely recycled, 2/3rds of it has to be new plastic.

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