Traditional Plastic vs. Corn Plastic: A Bottle-Battle to the Death

Problem Statement

Is Polylactic Acid (PLA) corn plastic a workable alternative to traditional Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastics?

Introduction

Plastic is one of the most used products in the world, and people rely on plastic everyday of their lives. Plastics are used to make cars, used in grocery stores and used for electronics. Basically plastic can be used to make anything. Alexander Parkes is credited for creating the first man-made plastic in 1853. He created a thermo plastic, which melts when it’s heated, and thermo plastic led to the creation of thermoset plastics, which keep shape until it’s burnt. By the 1930’s traditional plastics were taking the world by storm. Polyethylene was created in the 30’s and this form of plastic was cheap to make, very flexible, durable and chemically resistant. Polyethylene was the main plastic that was used up until the 1950’s when scientists created polypropylene, a byproduct of polyethylene. Polypropylene is a more diverse plastic that remained cheap to produce, and it was much stronger than polyethylene. Polypropylene is now used in plastic bottles, carpets, furniture and cars and it’s the plastic we rely on the most. There are seven different forms of polypropylene, and all of them are used in society. By 1976 plastic became the most used material in the United States, and by 1996 the plastic industry employed over 1.3 million people. However, polypropylene plastic, like any product, does have its drawbacks. Recycling has become an issue with the product, because many people are recycling but they’re doing so improperly. This is causing space to run out in landfills, which is a growing concern because polypropylene plastic takes thousands of years to break down. So chemists have been working on a different form of plastic, called polylactic acid (PLA) or also known as corn plastic. Scientist’s and manufacturers have been looking at different alternatives for plastic for decades. In the 1930’s Henry Ford began making car parts out of soybeans. By the 1940’s Ford had created a “soybean car,” which was a bio-plastic body on a steel frame. World War II led to this different means of production being halted, because it was more cost effective to make products out of plastic. However, by the 1980’s corn plastic was arriving on the scene. Like many new products, corn plastic was very expensive to produce and the products were far inferior to the products made out of polypropylene plastics. Then in 1989 a Cargill chemist, Patrick Gruber, created an efficient way to make a corn plastic, and created the first prototype of PLA on his kitchen stove. When corn plastic was first being produced it cost around $200 to produce a pound of the product. Now it costs less than one dollar to produce the plastic. Many people like the idea of corn plastic because it uses natural resources to be produced instead of non-renewable resources, such as petroleum. Corn plastic is beginning to be used by manufacturers and companies on a greater basis, but there’s still controversy about the corn plastic product. The central question of our research is whether or not manufacturers should switch from traditional plastic to corn plastic? We have done a great deal of research, and invite you to read what we have found.