Oil:Plastics? What is their relationship?

Can anyone help me with this?

What part does oil play in the manufacture of plastics? Not transportation and handling, but the actual creation of plastic, you always hear that plastics are petroleum products. How so?

Can you point me to a resource I can cite?

http://www.plasticsresource.com/s_plasticsresource/sec.asp?TRACKID=&CID=124&DID=226




In 1907, chemist Leo Hendrik Baekland, while striving to produce a synthetic varnish, stumbled upon the formula for a new synthetic polymer originating from coal tar. He subsequently named the new substance "bakelite." Because of its properties as an electrical insulator, bakelite was used in the production of high-tech objects including cameras and telephones. It was also used in the production of ashtrays and as a substitute for jade, marble and amber. By 1909, Baekland had coined "plastics" as the term to describe this completely new category of materials.

The first patent for polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a substance now used widely in vinyl siding and water pipes, was registered in 1914. Cellophane was also discovered during this period.

Plastics did not really take off until after the First World War, with the use of petroleum, a substance easier to process than coal into raw materials. Plastics served as substitutes for wood, glass and metal during the hardship times of World Wars I & II. After World War II, newer plastics, such as polyurethane, polyester, silicones, polypropylene, polycarbonate and polymethyl methacrylate joined polystyrene and PVC in widespread applications. Many more would follow and by the 1960s, plastics were within everyone's reach due to their inexpensive cost. Plastics had thus come to be considered 'common' - a symbol of the consumer society.

http://lifecycle.plasticsresource.com/step1.html

Plastics are essentially hydro-carbon molecules with chemicals added to make specific types of plastic resin. The resins require petroleum as a basic building block. The mixture of petroleum and chemicals/compounds/fillers (glass/talc) are processed and extruded into pellets which is sold/marketed to plastic injection molding manufacturers. The pellets are remelted rammed into molds to product plastic parts.

sacks, because people are fighting and dieing for the oil that creates them. Also told him to google "peak oil". Young guy, he was actually interested. I didn't want to be wrong.

Keep in mind that paper bags need considerable processing (electricity, which mainly comes from fossil fuels), AND are heavier and more bulky to transport, which means that more gas is being used to ship them.

About the only way out is to bring your own canvas sacks to the store and re-use, re-use, re-use.

depending on how the paper bag is made, the plastic bag may require less energy (which almost certainly came from "Dinosaur Blood") or be more ecologically sound (where did the paper come from, will it be recycled, etc.)

Isn't this fun?

nothing personally, really, you may not have wanted to be wrong, but you certainly were and you have just provided the best example of the idiocy that plagues the left when they act from the heart but not the brain.

without any truly valuable knowledge to make a cogent decision you worked against your professed causes.

ah, the liberal mind on display.

the polyethylene or polypropylene bags you declined are not made from petrochemicals such as oil.

they are made from natural gas.

the US has lots and lots of natural gas. anyone who was serious about using american sourced materials so as to decrease american dependence on foreign oil and thus the iraq quagmire would naturally want to use polyethylene materials, probably even over paper due to its own comcomitant environmental pollution to get it to market.

such actions are not based on reality but on confused perception.

and stuff made from them probably has the same environmental impact (manufacture of; as trash). To a small extent oil/gas are energy-fungible (electric generation, heating).

PS the US is running out of natural gas. :(

Personally I ask for plastic (when i forge my little cloth sack), then I reuse them till they fall apart.

From One Barrel of Oil (about 42 gallons of crude):

Products (Gallons per barrel)
gasoline (19.5)
distillate fuel oil (Includes both home heating oil and diesel fuel) (9.2)
kerosene-type jet fuel (4.1)
residual fuel oil (Heavy oils used as fuels in industry, marine transportation and for electric power generation) (2.3)
liquefied refinery gasses (1.9)
still gas (1.9)
coke (1.8)
asphalt and road oil (1.3)
petrochemical feedstock's (1.2)
lubricants (0.5)
kerosene (0.2)
other (0.3)

http://www.petroleum.org/petrokids/petroperbbl.htm

The 'petrochemical feedstocks' goes toward plastics, as well as fetilizer, pesticide, solvents, etc...

I'm going to repost this in the Lounge under the "how much is gas in your area?" thread. Folks might find it interesting. :hi:

What I find interesting in it, among other things, is that the 1.2 gallons out of every barrel of oil for 'petrochemical feedstocks' is basically what enables an extra 4 billion people to eat most every day (looking at estimated carrying capacity of the earth without petro-agriculture).

Not going to be pretty when it's not so easily available, that's for sure. Forget cars -- it's modern agriculture's reliance on oil that is really going to hurt!

like ethene and propene (which make polythene and polypropylene) are side products of the process of 'cracking' the heavier fractions of crude oil to produce more gasoline. So economically it works out very nicely to use plenty of both - no waste.

It's the only good thing I can see in this....

Pcat