Conclusion

     After reaching our conclusion, we decided that polylactic acid is an effective alternative to polyethylene and polypropylene. This is because polylactic acid can be created naturally by using the enzyme lactase to produce lactide from which polylactic acid is created through a polymerizing process. Polylactic acid decomposes easily in soil and contrasts with the decomposition of polyethylene since polyethylene takes a long period time to decompose and leaves traces of chemicals in the soil. A negative effect of the production of polylactic acid, however, is that the polymerizing process utilized to create polylactic acid from lactide is rather expensive compared to the processes used to produce polyethylene. As a group, we reasoned that since the burning of fossil fuels contributes to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it would be better for the US to spend more money producing environmentally friendly bags with expensive green processes rather than produce bags that are difficult to decompose that are economically cheap to produce using the burning of fossil fuels to make.

     As our research stated, the technology utilized to create polylactic acid wasn't available in the 1950s and was suggested by our contact that this was due to the easy and cheap methods available to obtain crude oil. The easy access to oil explains why the US wasn't focused on discovering this technology even though it would have been available through research because they were more focused on producing bags efficiently and easily. If we were to travel back to the 1950's in the US, we would make oil difficult to access, and more expensive. This would force researchers in the 1950's to find more environmentally friendly methods to create plastic bags because they would have to use natural resources and environmental friendly processes in order to create plastic bags. By restricting the use of fossil fuels in the US, we are hoping to encourage the development of bioplastics such as polylactic acid based bags earlier in history so that the build up of plastic bags in the environment wouldn’t be a current issue and also to facilitate the existence of an extremely green bag that is cheap and easy to produce with the technology developed since the 1950s due to our change.