Discovery Channel How It's Made - Plastic Bags

This is a video that shows us how factories make plastic bags these days. The video demonstrates how low and high density polyethylene are combined together to create a film of polyethylene, which is later made into plastic bags. 

Courtesy of Discovery Channel and the Science Channel

History of Plastic Bags

     Plastic shopping bags were first invented in Sweden by engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin. He came up with the idea of folding and forming bags from plastic tubes for the packaging company, Celloplast. This created a sturdy useful bag which was widely used and patented all over the world. Plastic bags are created of petroleum and mainly polyethylene resin. Petroleum was extremely cheap in the 1950's therefore no other ways of producing plastic bags were researched. However this causes plastic bags to take a long time to degrade because some of the materials in the polymer (polymer is used to make plastic bags) are non biodegradable. Also the chemicals used to make plastic bags lowers the quality of soil since the chemicals decay and enter the soil. It could take up to 1000 years for the plastic bag to degrade.  

Quantities of Plastic Bags Related to the Function Unit

http://www.ademe.fr/htdocs/actualite/rapport_carrefour_post_revue_critique_v4.pdf

Timeline of Plastic Bag Development in the U.S.

http://cleanerearthproject.org/Text%20page/Articles%20-%20plastic%20bag%20timeline.html

Group 4 Project - Group Names & Topic

Introduction

Topic/Question:  If we travel back to when plastic bags were first produced and look at what chemicals and machinery were available, will we be able to change the product and production of the bags to be less harmful to the environment?

Where are we going back to? In general, we are going back to the United States of America because they had the resources, knowledge, and technology to change the method plastic bags were created. 

When in time are we going back to? We are going back to the 1950s since this was when the first plastic bags were first manufactured.

Group Members:

1. Joyce Ma

2. Esther Yun

3. Andrew Wang

4. Gabriel Lynn