Amira Aquarian

Chemistry
January 27, 2020

Chemistry of Single-Use Materials Project Reflection

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?
During this project, I leanred that the chemical composition and structure
determines it’s properties with regard to its use, reuse, and capacity for recycling. I
focused on the polymer polyethylene terephthalate (PETE). This plastic is primarily a
molecular chain derived from petroleum hydrocarbons. This is created by two main
chemicals, terephthalic acid, and ethylene glycol. For plastics as a whole, they are
covalently bonded allowing it to take on the property of having a low boiling point. It is
able to be melted and broken down, shaped, reshaped, and hardened due to its strong
molecular structure. Each time plastic is recycled, it’s molecular chain grows shorter and
shorter. This allows it to go through the process of being used, recycled, and then
reused about 2-3 times. Once the quality of the plastic decreases, it is no longer able to
be used.

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?
The daily choices we make as consumers while purchasing, using, reusing,
recycling, and discarding of materials impact not only the environments in our local
community but also our global community. We have the power to choose between
making purchases at big company stores or smaller businesses or farmer’s markets. It’s
the small choices that we make without thinking that are changing our environment for
the worse. We need to be focused on buying brands that are more aware of what
materials they are using for their packaging to make sure we can truly recycle and reuse
them. There are so many fake advertisements when it comes to recycling. For example,
coffee cups. They seem to be recyclable because they are made out of paper or plastic,
but really they are coated with a material that does not allow it to be reused and they
have to be thrown into our ever-growing landfill piles. We as individuals need to make
conscious decisions about what we are consuming and promoting. Instead of plastic
bags in the store, we could use either paper or reusable bags, instead of a plastic coffee
cup from Starbucks every morning, we could purchase a reusable metal coffee mug.
There are so many small things that we buy just to go with the flow of everybody else.
What we don’t realize is that if every person brought their own shopping bag, their own
coffee mug, or even used washable snack bags, we could decrease the negative effects
 Amira Aquarian
Chemistry
January 27, 2020

each and every day. If we stop buying non-environmentally conscious products, we

could not only decrease the waste, we could also decrease the greenhouse gases
being emitted to process and deliver those things. Small individual changes and each
voice fighting for these things will add up and at some point along the road, help save
our planet.

What else did you learn through this project?

At the beginning of this project, we took a field trip to a couple of different places,
one of them being the Phoenix recycling. I was able to witness the process of
separating each different material from one another. it surprised me how many items
were advertised as recyclable but really they were being thrown away. The fact that
there are so many products that should be recycled but aren't able to be made me so
surprised. We then went to the landfill and I was informed of the process that each small
item needs to go through. We as consumers don't think about this but once I was able
to see the mountains of trash we produce on the daily which is taking up the valuable
land that we could be used for better purposes.
One major skill that I leanred/practiced throughout this project was proper time
management. I feel as though I took the leadership role in my group, and so I had to
make sure that we touched on each and every part that needed to be researched,
learned and explained in a comprehensible way. This created stress for me because I
needed to make sure that we not only finished on time for the exhibition but we created
quality work and research that we could be proud of. In order to achieve this, I sat down
with my partner at the beginning of every class and we discuss what we wanted our
daily goal to be and what we wanted to achieve by the end of the week. This was a skill
that I learned to do throughout the project because based on what little time we had, we
needed to utilize it in order to make a final product. Another huge part of this project for
me was refinement. this included not only editing our write-up about what we research
but also taking the confusing parts and either describing it by using pictures or
particulate representations.