• Question: can plastic be produced naturally?

    Asked by Kirsty to Imogen on 10 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Imogen Napper

      Imogen Napper answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      What a great question 😀 !

      Plastic is any material that can be shaped or molded into any form, some can be naturally occurring, but most are man-made.

      Natural sources of plastics include:
      plants – from which cellulose can be extracted
      trees – from which latex, amber and resin can be extracted
      animals – from which horn and milk (used to make glues) are obtained
      insects – from which shellac (used to make polish) is obtained

      However, most plastics are made from oil. Oil is a carbon-rich raw material, and plastics are large carbon-containing compounds.

      Plastics are large molecules called polymers, which are composed of repeating units of shorter carbon-containing compounds called monomers. Chemists combine various types of monomers in many different arrangements to make an almost infinite variety of plastics with different chemical properties.

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