Our way of life depends largely on plastics. What will we replace plastics when the oil runs out?

Question

Plastics are made from petrochemicals, meaning they're made from oil derivatives. Maybe we should stop burning oil and save it for constructive purposes. But if we can't, we need to find substitutes for plastics. Look around; most of the things you see are plastic--what will we use instead?

Answer 1

There are a couple of good answers and a couple of silly answers here. One of the main things you need to think about is quantity.

When you fill up your gas tank in your car you probably add well over 100 pounds of gasoline. In two or three days it is gone and you have to get another 100 pounds. Anyone who drives a lot uses many tons of petroleum based fuel in a year! In contrast, the amount of plastic you use, even if you have a lot of plastic in your home, is very small. How many pounds of grocery bags do you use in a year? Two or three? How many pounds of plastic packaging? Fifty?

So, long before we are actually completely out of gasoline - an event which will certainly happen within the lifetime of today's college students if you believe the stats from the Saudis and US government - check the EIA website for data -- long before that happens we will be forced to convert to non-petroleum sources of fuel such as ethanol, hydrogen fuel cells, etc. Some plastics we will be able to produce from other organic materials and some will be produced from the petroleum that is left.. Some plastics will be recycled - we could do a much better job with this right now if we weren't so lazy!

Canadian oil sands petroleum and similar sources will be too expensive and destructive to mine for transport use, but the much smaller scale mining for plastics would be reasonable.

Answer 2

By the time oil runs out, we'll be able to produce products at the molecular level using nanotechnology. Need more oil? Make it out of rocks and sand. Need plastic? Make it out of garbage or whatever you've got on hand.

Pick up Ray Kurzweil's book; The Singularity is Near for a description of rapidly evolving technology.

The scary part? The best building block in the world is Carbon. Know what we're made of?

Carbon.

Answer 3

THAT completely the oil won't run out. Its price will just go up.

If the raw material cost of plastics tripled, that wouldn't be NEARLY as big a deal as if the cost of energy tripled.

Answer 4

That is why the world needs to start depending on nuclear energy. It is a safe and raliable source of energy, and not only that, but, it can also safe money. Despite contrary belief, it CANNOT explode. The worst that can happen is a meltdown, which is only caused by when the plant has a bad design and/or has untrained workers.

Answer 5

Oil won't run out for hundreds of years. By that time, most of the world would rely on nuclear energy.

Also, new oil reserves are constantly being found. It is now known that Canada has more oil than Saudi Arabia.

Answer 6

We are making plastics out of plant oils. But we do need to recycle more. And of course find more fuel alternatives.

Answer 7

plastics are convenient and will remain convenient for many more years, and plastics will be simple recycled, i ve prototyped over 17 recycling devices directly related in re-utilizing plastics, and prototype #17 is recycling with a 95ppm impurity tolerance.

Answer 8

Plastics can also be made from renewable organic materials like soy beans. This is extremely likely.

Answer 9

Weaker metals for cell phones as for plastic packaging, I do not know. Maby we should start recycling plastic.

Answer 10

Glass