Word: petroleum
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Beyond making up the bricks of life, carbon is virtually inescapable in industry as well. The plastics that can be found in everything from your chair to the space shuttle contain carbon - as does, of course, our energy supply. Our main fossil fuels - coal, petroleum and gasoline - are made up of carbon that has been compressed in the Earth for millions of years and we're now burning and rapidly restoring to the atmosphere. (The same process occurs when we burn wood in a fireplace...
SOURCE: AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE...
...million tons of which ended up in landfills. Our food and water come wrapped in plastic. It's used in our phones and our computers, the cars we drive and the planes we ride in. But the infinitely adaptable substance has its dark side. Environmentalists fret about the petroleum needed to make it. Parents worry about the possibility of toxic chemicals making their way from household plastic into children's bloodstreams. Which means Haegele isn't the only person trying to cut plastic out of her life--she isn't even the only one blogging about this kind of endeavor...
...makes up nearly 12% of our trash, up from 1% in 1960. You can literally see the result 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of San Francisco in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic debris twice the size of Texas. The rising cost of petroleum may get plastic manufacturers to come up with incentives for recycling; current rates stand at less than 6% in the U.S. But the best way to reduce your plastic impact on the earth is simply to use less...
...Like the long line of chauffeured Mercedes waiting outside a conference whose purported theme is "sustainability," that isn't the only contradiction at the World Petroleum Congress. Although some industry experts have suggested that peak oil is near or at hand, many at the conference insisted that future supplies were adequate. "The question is not whether we are to going to achieve the next trillion barrels," said SaudiAramco's Muhammed Saggaf at a panel dedicated to the subject. "The question is where it's going to come from...