What type of plastic are spoons made of

Some of them source materials from fast-growing trees like birch or bamboo; Canadian brand Aspenware includes excess wood from the lumber industry in its utensils.

A line of disposable wooden cutlery called Clickeat is one example. Adler first realized the extent of the plastic waste issue about 10 years ago, while surfing with a friend in Chile.

The beach was covered in plastic litter. Alarmed, Adler started talking with others about how to best address the issue. Setting out to design an alternative, they founded their company, Simplo. In China, environmentalists have campaigned for people to carry their own chopsticks. The online marketplace Etsy has a whole section dedicated to reusable cutlery.

And the BYO cutlery movement appears to be gaining steam. But Panayos says plastic utensils remain particularly vexing to replace on a large scale. Problem spots include facilities that have limited dishwashing capabilities and places like prisons where more pliable, less dangerous, options are necessary. How your toothbrush became a part of the plastic crisis. The sticky problem of plastic wrap. This common plastic packaging is a recycling nightmare.

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Like many plastic items, cutlery often finds its way into the environment, where it poses dangers for animals and can take hundreds of years to break down.

These are modern aged spoons of all sizes, though usually tablespoon sized, that are made of plastic. They are inexpensive and available in bulk, meant to be used and disposed of after use. The best of them are biodegradable.

The spoons of the Greeks and Romans were chiefly made of bronze and silver and the handle usually takes the form of a spike or pointed stem. There are many examples in the British Museum from which the forms of the various types can be ascertained, the chief points of difference being found in the junction of the bowl with the handle.

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Skip to content. By Trey Granger May 25, recycling-plastic-utensils.

Unorthodox Shape Materials recovery facilities MRFs are designed to take everything from your blue bin and sort it by material, then bale and send it off to a recycling company. The China Conundrum When accepted for recycling, plastic utensils are classified as rigid plastics, just like clamshell packaging , blister packs and yogurt containers.

Related Post. Modifiers are typically added to both of these base polymers to improve the stability of the material and make manufacturing easier. Often, coloring agents are added to make the material more appealing than the typical colorless material that originally results in initial production. For example, the inorganic material titanium oxide can be included to produce the color white, which is the most typical color of plastic utensils. Fossil Fuel. Raw material for hydrocarbons.

Oil or Natural Gas. Base polymeric material. Propylene, Polystyrene, Ethylene. Produces Color. Titanium Oxide White. Increases workability and flexibility of polymer. Paraffinic Oils, Glycerol. Prevents breakdown of polymers during heating. Unsaturated Oils ex Soy Bean Oil. Prevent Environmental Degradation. Ultra Violet Protectors, Antioxidants.

Removal Compounds. Helps remove plastic from mold. Ethoxylated Fatty Acids, Silicones. Figure 1 Romanowski , The number one ingredient in plastic is the hydrocarbon, which comes from oil or natural gas.

All fossil fuels are reflective of their name, as they are merely the remains of organic matter that existed millions of years ago.

Under continuous pressure, the material can change into another state of matter; gas. That gas, or natural gas, typically sits atop of oil deposits or exist on their own. The extraction of crude oil is an intensive engineering process along with continuously growing in national and international contention.

Oil can be extracted on either land or at sea. Land extraction typically consists of fields of many small oil wells, tapping into multiple points across an identified oil field.

With local production of oil under constant debate, ranging from tapping oil deposits in wildlife reserves, building pipelines hundreds of miles and potentially hazardous water-based extraction such as the Exxon Valdez shipwreck or the BP Deep Water Horizon Oil Platform explosion , the benefits of local oil production may soon be outweighed by the safety and environmental costs.

In conjunction with the fears of having passed peak global oil production and international instability of oil extraction and control in the Middle East, acquisition of oil is increasingly coming into debate. Natural gas, a fossil fuel that is receiving increased attention in lieu of the challenges surrounding oil, has recently fallen into its own contention as well.

Natural gas is extracted though two main processes. The first is very much like an oil well, where a line is drilled into rock and gas is pumped out of a large natural gas pocket. A solution, consisting of mostly water and trace amounts of dissolving substances, is then pumped down into the bedrock. The hope is that the solution breaks apart the rock, releasing the natural gas. Once the gas is free, it can then be easily extracted.

That solution however, can seep into localized water sources, such as aquifers and wells. It has been well documented that homeowners with natural gas pumps on their property have been able to ignite their tap water due to the trace substances in the fracking solution being flammable.

And recently the sudden occurrence of man-made earthquakes has been attributed to the fracking process Joyce, When that solution is able to seep in between the layers of bedrock, it can act as a lubricant to allow the different layers of rock to slip past once another, releasing a tremendous amount of tension and stress, resulting in small earthquakes.

The state of Ohio recently came to this conclusion and recently closed down all natural gas hydraulic fracturing production. This move still may not stop earthquakes from happening for quite some time as the liquid is still down there, but it now stops the natural gas industry and halts potential jobs and income for the state.

After the fossil fuel has been extracted and refined, it is then shipped to the plastic production company, which is where the construction of the plastic takes place. After all of the specified materials are called upon for the specific plastic needed, they are processed together to create the polymer desired.

Nurdles are the original form of which all other plastic forms are created from. Nurdles are taken into the assembly line and often melted down into a liquid state, allowing for easier mass production of the utensil. The liquid is then formed and cooled into a malleable plastic sheet where the utensils can be easily cut but still retain shape. See Figure 2. After the initial sheet has been used and plastic scraps are all that remain, the scraps are often collected and then reintroduced with new Nurdles to form another sheet.

This is done to minimize waste. Utensils can then carry on down a production line where they are wrapped with other utensils in single use bags as pictured or can be placed in mass containers for consumer or industrial needs. The containers themselves are often also made of plastic or are cardboard boxes.

Production companies for plastic utensils exist all over the world, but are most notably in the United States and China. When the plastic resins are changed from solid to liquid via heating, the possibility for some of the chemical additives in the resins to become vapor is highly potential. Some have been known to be carcinogens, neurotoxins and reproductive toxins ERI, Often times, the workers in these factories share similar characteristics; younger and of reproductive age, lesser educated, often poor and in many countries outside the United States, workers are female Leonard, The production of plastic for utensils is also an intensive energy and materialistic process, having a large environmental impact for the amount of product generated.

In figure 3, the numbers for several factors are accounted for, calculating the demand of resources needed to produce one pound of either polypropylene or polystyrene, the two main plastics used in plastic utensil production.