Abstract

The 20th century was dominated by the development of plastics. Walker has described plastics as the building blocks of the 20th century [1]. The ingenuity of polymer chemists to prepare polymers tailored for particular applications ranging from the safe transport of water and electricity, through affordable household goods and lightweight cars to medical applications, coupled with development of high through put manufacturing technologies such as film blowing, fibre spinning, and injection molding have powered these developments. In the late twentieth century, there was a growing realization of the downside of widely available durable plastic goods. There are two strands to this downside. The first is focused on the impact of the production, use and disposal of plastics on the atmosphere, in particular the contribution to Global Warming and Climate Change. It is interesting to note that Global Warming and Plastics have a rather similar timeline in terms of scientific discovery. The start of the plastics revolution is associated with the work of Baekeland in developing Bakelite [2] and not long afterwards Staudinger published his groundbreaking work on the concept of long chain polymers [3,4].