Chemistry

1. How does the chemical composition and structure of a substance determine its properties with regard to its use, capacity for reuse, and capacity for recycling?

 

For my project specifically, to be downcycled all of the plastics need to be the same type (PET or HDPE) and after they are downcycled the structure gets weaker and weaker over time which results in it being unusable. This is because a lot of the times it is downcycled into shoes or fleece, which are overall, not recyclable. So eventually, the materials that were downcycled will end up in a landfill. The process of the downcycling process is beneficial at the time, but once it gets to the landfill and everything but the plastic has degraded, the plastic will just be left as tiny fragments surrounding what there once was. 

 

2. How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and environment?

 

I think that a lot of people don’t now what downcycling is or if they do, how it works and why it is good for our communities. Personally, I had never heard of downcycling before this project, but after learning so much, I feel like it can be very good for our world. Although it still involves plastic, which isn’t the greatest for our planet, you are reusing it, which means that less has to be made from scratch. With downcycling, you can make so many different things that you wouldn’t even expect, such as rope, benches, more plastic bags, etc. I don’t think that downcycling is the perfect solution to the world’s plastic problem, but it can be a very big step to find the best solution. 

 

3. What else did you learn through this project?

 

I learned a lot during this project mostly because of my partners. Ethan was really educated on our project previously so it was really helpful when the audience asked questions that Hingis and I didn’t even consider while we were putting our project together. I also didn’t know that recycling and downcycling were considered different things, and it was fun to research how and why they were different. 

I think throughout this project I learned to step back a little bit. I wasn’t the leader of the project and it felt nice to not constantly worry about if our project is perfect. I think I stepped back because I didn’t know very much about our project and therefore I didn’t feel fit to lead the group. This worked out wonderfully for me as I said earlier because I had way less stress then I’d had on previous projects.