4 ms·

You can't beat polymers for consistency, finishing, handling, tooling, durability, etc. For each friction point with wood, you could create dynamic systems to a

• yardie 13y ago
  The future is mountains of plastic. One of the good things about wood is you don't have to worry about it sticking around for 1000+ years. The problem with plastics is most of it can't be recycled. Not the way we think of recycling. Aluminum cans are melted down and turned back into aluminum cans. Polymers are ground up and injection molded into lower grade polymers. Once too many polymer chains get broken the grade is too low to be usable.
  • Kliment 13y ago
    Careful polymer selection can work around that. PLA can be digested back into starch by an enzyme or composted at high temperature. There are plastics that can be cleanly incinerated or ground up and embedded in concrete mixes as insulation. You can chemically depolymerize a number of plastics and end up with much more manageable products. The real problem is getting all that stuff out of the world at large and into a processing plant.
    • yardie 13y ago
      > The real problem is getting all that stuff out of the world at large and into a processing plant. The problem with plastics is its cheap acquisition costs and expensive disposal costs. One of the good things about living in a developed country is we sorta manage the disposal costs well. In developing countries they don't manage plastic disposal at all. In all my travels one of the overriding themes I've seen is plastic on the sides of road, in rivers, on the beach. When I removed the wooden door from a house we didn't need to call the city to send a special truck to dispose of it. We chopped it into pieces and used it for bbq. Then we mixed the ashes into the compost. Disposal was $0. While plastic is cheap in the short term I think there are a lot of long term costs that get ignored.
      • jaggederest 13y ago
        You can burn most plastics too, it's not like polyethylene doesn't burn like frozen gasoline. Sure, some of them will offgas toxic byproducts but so, too, does wood smoke.
      • nwenzel 13y ago
        "cheap acquisition costs and expensive disposal costs" Great point. Simple and head-smack obvious when you read it. Hits right at the core. Immediately after reading, I generalized to "cheap up-front, expensive back-end costs."
    • frogpelt 13y ago
      Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_garbage_patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_garbage_patch
  • maxerickson 13y ago
    It isn't all that dire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis#Plastic_waste_disposal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis#Plastic_waste_disposa... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization (Those processes mostly just mean that it all comes down to whether you want to put energy into something. Whether they are economical today doesn't factor into the usefulness in eliminating mountains of plastic.)
    • hakanderyal 13y ago
      We are running a pyrolysis plant for recycling used car tires, and pyrolysis is also used for recycling municipal solid waste. It's quite profitable, just the required amount of upfront investment is high.
  • panzagl 13y ago
    In order for wood to last in an application like a thermostat box you basically have to cover it in plastic (polyurethane) anyway.
• huhtenberg 13y ago
  - I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. - Yes, sir. - Are you listening? - Yes, I am. - Plastics.
  • billforsternz 13y ago
    Nice. It's a quote from "The Graduate" in case there's anyone puzzled by this. Career advice from a wise grey head to the young Dustin Hoffman character.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]