Materials conservation and the polymer industry

Abstract

The total utilisable resources of carbon in the biosphere are enormous by any standards. In the atmosphere alone there are about 700 billion tons of carbon as carbon dioxide and in the oceans there are stored 35,000 billion tons of available carbon dioxide. These two reserves alone amount to about four times the estimated total reserves of carbon in the form of coal and oil. The essential difference between these alternative sources of carbon is that whereas the carbon in the biological cycle is being continuously circulated in a system in which the total amount of carbon remains sensibly constant (there is a further 30,000 billion tons of carbon in the form of biological organic matter), the carbon in the form of coal and oil reserves are being rapidly depleted with consequent escalating cost and the lifetime of this source of chemicals and energy is variously estimated as being between 20 and 50 years.