Plastic

Your little one will love making a splash with their favorite Baby Einstein characters while learning their colors! This fun book is soft, durable, and floats in the water. It is also easy to clean and ready to be used again and again.

There is virtually nowhere on earth that remains untouched by plastics and the situation presents a serious threat to our natural world. Despite the magnitude of the problem, the interventions most often put in place are consumer-led and market-based and only nominally capable of addressing the issue. As the problem worsens and neoliberal ideologies limit the world’s responses to this crisis, there is a growing need for legislative frameworks that attend to the complex social and ecological issues associated with plastics. The contributors to this volume bring expertise from across academic disciplines to illustrate how plastics are produced, consumed, and discarded and to find holistic and integrated approaches that demonstrate an understanding of the wide-ranging problem. From the plasticization of earth’s oceans to the endocrine disrupting chemicals that have the potential to seriously harm life as we know it, these essays beg the question that we all must answer: what is our plastic legacy? With contributions by: Imogen E. Napper, Sabine Pahl, Richard C. Thompson, Sasha Adkins, Stephanie B. Borrelle, Jennifer Provencher, Tina Ngata, Sven Bergmann, Christina Gerhardt, Elyse Stanes, Tridibesh Dey, Mike Michael, Laura McLauchlan, Johanne Tarpgaard, Deirdre McKay, Padmapani Perez, Lei Xiaoyu, and John Holland.

“This eloquent, elegant book thoughtfully plumbs the . . . consequences of our dependence on plastics” (The Boston Globe, A Best Nonfiction Book of 2011). From pacemakers to disposable bags, plastic built the modern world. But a century into our love affair, we’re starting to realize it’s not such a healthy relationship. As journalist Susan Freinkel points out in this eye-opening book, we’re at a crisis point. Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. We’re drowning in the stuff, and we need to start making some hard choices. Freinkel tells her story through eight familiar plastic objects: a comb, a chair, a Frisbee, an IV bag, a disposable lighter, a grocery bag, a soda bottle, and a credit card. With a blend of lively anecdotes and analysis, she sifts through scientific studies and economic data, reporting from China and across the United States to assess the real impact of plastic on our lives. Her conclusion is severe, but not without hope. Plastic points the way toward a new creative partnership with the material we love, hate, and can’t seem to live without. “When you write about something so ubiquitous as plastic, you must be prepared to write in several modes, and Freinkel rises to this task. . . . She manages to render the most dull chemical reaction into vigorous, breathless sentences.” —SF Gate “Freinkel’s smart, well-written analysis of this love-hate relationship is likely to make plastic lovers take pause, plastic haters reluctantly realize its value, and all of us understand the importance of individual action, political will, and technological innovation in weaning us off our addiction to synthetics.” —Publishers Weekly “A compulsively interesting story. Buy it (with cash).” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “What a great read—rigorous, smart, inspiring, and as seductive as plastic itself.” —Karim Rashid, designer

This report reviews the current use of plastics for packaging both by technology and market covering the world in consumption and growth terms as well as material and process developments.

ORGANIC REACTIONS Thought-provoking discussions of the challenges posed by—and potential solutions to—plastic and microplastic pollution In Plastic and Microplastic in the Environment: Management and Health Risks, a team of distinguished environmental researchers delivers an up-to-date exploration of plastic and microplastic environmental contamination, conventional and advanced plastics management techniques, and the policies adopted across the globe to combat the phenomenon of plastics contamination. Containing a balanced focus on both conventional plastics and microplastics, this book discusses the potential health issues related to plastic and microplastic infiltration in a variety of global environments and environmental media, including freshwater environments, oceanic environments, soil and sediment, and air. Insightful treatments of commercial and social issues, including the roles of corporate social responsibility initiatives and general education in the fight against plastic and microplastic pollution, are provided as well. Plastic and Microplastic in the Environment also includes: A thorough introduction to plastic debris in global environments, including its accumulation and disintegration Comprehensive explorations of policies for strengthening recyclable markets around the world Practical discussions of the prevalence of microplastics in the marine environment, air, soil, and other environmental media In-depth examinations of wastewater treatment plants as a potential source point of microplastics, as well as conventional and advanced microplastic particle removal technologies Perfect for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates in fields related to environmental science and plastics, Plastic and Microplastic in the Environment: Management and Health Risks will also earn a place in the libraries of professionals working in the plastics industries and environmental policymakers.

Plastic is a valuable resource. It's also problematic. Since chemist Leo Baekeland invented the first synthetic plastic in 1907, and through the rapid increase of plastic production during the 1950s, we have created billions of tons of plastic. We have polluted the world's oceans and upset the balance of natural ecosystems. With this fact-packed book, readers will gain a crucial understanding about the global significance of plastic pollution. They'll study how it evolved over time and what steps governments and activists have taken to resolve it.

This book shows the true and often-underestimated market potential of plastics recycling, with analysis from economic, ecological, and technical perspectives. It is aimed at both technical and non-technical readers, including decision makers in material suppliers, plastic product manufacturers, governmental agencies, educators, and anyone with a general interest in plastics recycling. An overview of waste handling systems with a focus on the U.S. market is provided. Different methods of waste handling are compared from both economic and ecological perspectives. Since plastic waste recycling is essential from an ecological point of view, common strategies and new approaches to both increase the recycling rate and improve recycling economically and technically are presented. This includes processing and material properties of recycled plastics. Finally, a worldwide outlook of plastic recycling is provided with analysis of additional worldwide markets, encompassing highly developed, fast-developing, and less developed countries. This revised and expanded second edition also contains a new section on fiber-reinforced plastics and considerations for recycling them as well as numerous updates on the data and the context analyzed throughout the book. The spreadsheets used in the economic analyses are also offered as a bonus for the reader to download from plus.hanser-fachbuch.de/en. True to the authors’ mission, this book is printed on recycled paper.