Transition Island Blog

New Scientist, a very proper magazine reporting professionally on scientific matters, got emotional about plastic bags.

happy birthday?

They  noted the birthday of the discovery of plastic back in 1933. Technically they reported it was discovered by “Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson at ICI in Northwich, England when they put a mixture of ethylene and benzaldehyde under very high pressure.”

Plastics have since been improved, as any new invention would be.

not celebrating!

“The reason we’re not celebrating their birthday is the ethylene - it comes from crude oil.

Another reason is the very reason they’ve become so popular: plastics take 1000 years to rot.”

So science doesn’t always produce ‘good stuff’.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Eco-News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.