A photographer's experiment in a darkroom led to the first plastic. Alexander Parks has many hobbies, and photography is one of them. In the19th century, people can't buy ready-made photographic films and chemicals as they do today. They must always make what they need. So every photographer must also be a chemist. One of the materials used in photography is "collodion", which is a kind of "nitrocellulose" solution, that is, nitrocellulose solution in alcohol and ether. At that time, it was used to stick photosensitive chemicals on glass and make photographic film equivalent to today. In the 1950s of 19, Parks studied different methods to treat collodion. One day, he tried to mix collodion with camphor. To his surprise, a flexible hard material was produced after mixing. Parks called this substance "Paxsin", which was the earliest plastic. Parks made all kinds of objects with Paxsin: combs, pens, buttons and jewelry patterns. However, Parks is not very business-conscious. He lost money in his business venture. Image above: In the 20th century, people began to explore new uses of plastics. Almost everything in the house can be made of some kind of plastic. Leave it to other inventors to continue to develop Parks' achievements and profit from them. John wesley Heath, a printer from New York State, saw this opportunity in 1868, when a billiards company complained about the shortage of ivory. Heath improved the manufacturing process and gave Paxsin a new name-celluloid. He got a ready-made market from billiards manufacturers, and soon he made various products out of plastic. Early plastic caught fire easily, which limited the range of products made from it. The first plastic that can successfully resist high temperature is "Beckett". Leo Baekeland obtained this patent on 1909. 1909, phenolic plastics were synthesized for the first time in Baekeland, USA. In 1930s, nylon came out again, which was called "a kind of fiber composed of coal, air and water, thinner than spider silk, harder than steel and better than silk". Their appearance laid the foundation for the invention and production of various plastics. Due to the development of petrochemical industry in World War II, the raw material of plastics replaced coal with oil, and the plastic manufacturing industry also developed rapidly. Plastic is a very light substance, which can be softened by heating at a very low temperature and made into various shapes at will. Plastic products are bright in color, light in weight, not afraid of falling, economical and durable. Its appearance not only brings a lot of convenience to people's lives, but also greatly promotes the development of industry. However, plastics were invented less than 100 years ago. If people were ecstatic about their birth at that time, now they have to deal with these things that are full of life and pose a great threat to the living environment of mankind. Plastic is a chemical petroleum product extracted from petroleum or coal, and it is difficult to degrade naturally once it is produced. Plastics will not rot and degrade after 200 years underground, and a large amount of plastic garbage will destroy the permeability of soil, harden the soil and affect the growth of plants. If domestic animals eat plastic mixed with feed or left in the wild by mistake, they will also die because of digestive tract obstruction. At present, the annual output of plastics in China is 300,000 tons and the consumption is more than 6 million tons. The annual output of plastics in the world is 654.38 billion tons. If the annual plastic waste is calculated as 654.38+05%, the annual plastic waste in the world is 6.5438+05 million tons, and the annual plastic waste in China is more than 6.5438+00 million tons, accounting for 40% of the waste. So a lot of waste plastics are buried underground as garbage, which undoubtedly gives the already scarce cultivated land. Plastics not only bring convenience to people's lives, but also bring irreparable troubles to the environment. People call the disaster that plastics bring to the environment "oil pollution". At present, many countries use incineration (heat energy recovery) or reprocessing (product recovery) to treat waste plastics. These two methods can recycle waste plastics and save resources. However, because waste plastics will produce gases harmful to human body and pollute the environment when burning or reprocessing, it can be said that the treatment of waste plastics is still a headache in environmental protection.