Wouldn't recycling plastic lower gas prices?

Question

Here is my train of thougt:

Plastic is made from pretrorleum.

If we throw away plastic we are throwing away pretroleum

If we are throwing away plastic more pretroleum has to be used to make new plastic (since everything has to be made of plastic these days)

Therefore more and more pretroleum is being used

Less and less is avaliable

Supply and demand - gas (made from pretroleum) prices go up

Or am I just insane or wrong about this?

Answer 1

You are kind of wrong about your thoughts (not picking on you).

Plastic has a very low melting point.  This means plastic melts, before it can be made hot enough to be made sterile.  So old milk jugs, and yogurt containers will NEVER be melted down to contain food again.  Since the plastic cannot reach a temperature to kill the food particles/bacteria, that plastic milk jug must be made into something entirely new.  Like a plastic park bench, rail road ties, a sweater, ect.

Brand new plastic (and oil) must be used to make brand new, clean plastic to hold our food products.  

By the way, plastic was created in the 1930's.  97% of the plastic ever created, since the 1930's is still here on earth today, as plastic.  Plastic does NOT biodegrade and return to the earth.  Plastic simply breaks down into smaller and smaller particles, until the are microscopic, but still plastic (!!), and then enters our food chain at a microscopic level.

Plastic blocks up, and kills these microscopic critters.  Without microscopic life, life on earth, as we know it would cease.  

Here's a very interesting link, I hop you will look at:

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/toc.html

Scroll down to chapter 9.  The author of the book has posted this chapter on line to be read for free.  It is an exremely interesting chapter about plastics.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 2

right and wrong.

Keep in mind you must gather up the plastic, then you must transport the plastic, then you must use energy to remake the plastic,

so its a toss up.

Answer 3

invent a plastic burning car!

Answer 4

The volume of petroleum used to produce plastics and petrochemicals is such a small percentage of the total that stopping all plastic production would not affect prices at all.  Furthermore, most of the crude oil used to make plastic cannot be used for anything else so if plastics were not produced this product would be wasted.  It's about maximizing the use of a resource- back in the late 19th century, crude oil was refined into kerosene and fuel oil and what was left, nearly half the volume, was a waste product that they couldn't get rid of.  That waste product was called "gasoline".

Answer 5

Actually it won't help reduce our use of petroleum/oil.  Oil (the fuel kind) is composed of many organic compounds that have many different uses.  Gasoline/Kerosine and the like are used as fuels.  Other compounds are used as lubricants.  Only about 5% of what is in oil can be used to make plastics.  And, in general they are not used for fuels...unless they are burned in a furnace.  Better to recycle/reuse than to burn/bury.

Answer 6

are u ******* stupid. gas keeps going up cuz or that strike thing. dude ask some thing serious