How does the chemical composition and structure of a substance determine its properties with regard to its use, capacity for reuse, and capacity for recycling?
I learned throughout this project that plastic can be shredded into very fine grains, which does break some chemical bonds because it’s tearing it apart, but it is also changing its physical state. Patagonia then takes this now shredded plastic and uses it for the stuffing in there puffy jackets. But when plastics, such as polymers, are heated, they do not melt. Once heat is applied the bonds in the plastic began to break, destroying the crosslinks between the polymers, therefore the plastics degrades and burns.
How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and environment?
The choices that we make as the people of the community can be what either makes a difference or not. As long as we continue to purchase products from stores with single-use plastic you're just as bad as the people making the product. Think about everything that you buy that is in a single-use plastic container, shampoo, laundry detergent, dish soup, milk, coffee, etc...The list goes on endlessly. If we all began to make a change and started to go to We-Fill, a company here in durango that is taking your old soap, lotion, shampoo and other containers and you just go refill them using the same container. It’s hard to say that there is any solution for plastic and other materials that all end up in the landfill, but there are steps that if everyone in our community began to take would make a difference. If we began to buy less plastics from the stores that would call for them to put in less orders for those materials, slowing down the production line. With the condition that the planet stands in, there is no way to completely eliminate plastics, and waste, there is only a way to slow it down.
What else did you learn through this project? You can reference:
I learned a lot about what we as citizens can do to help reduce our single-use plastic intake. As I talked about in the question above, which I had recently learned about is the company We-Fill in durango. Someone at exhibition had come up to me and told Lucy and I about it. Then when I went to my work I noticed all their soap bottles in the bathroom had We-Fill on the front. I also learned that Patagonia has been moving towards %100 recycled products for their clothing line and the production of their bags. I also learned through Logan and Gages project that people are moving towards melting plastic to convert it into energy. Which was really cool to learn about because I had no idea that was a thing people were doing.