I'm not a chemist but I've recently come to realize that the meaning of the term in the popular psyche has probably changed over the decades, taking on largely negative connotations, because of its association with a small subset of materials (albeit large by volume), most of which are either toxic, a pollution problem, or both.
AFAIU, in industry "plastics" is just a blanket term for moldable organic materials that chemists are constantly inventing. They're not necessarily sourced from petroleum, nor necessarily toxic. It's a ridiculously huge category of material, and plastics really were and probably always will figure prominently in our future. And I would assume that some traditional, even edible materials have been subsumed into the plastics category given the general scope of the term and the industry itself.
Former chemist, yeah this always bugs me. Laypeople use "plastic" to refer to mostly inexpensive injection molded parts, but it really includes everything from LDPE bags to glass fibre reinforced nylon powertools to Rayon fibers to thermoplastic elastomers.
I'm not a chemist but I've recently come to realize that the meaning of the term in the popular psyche has probably changed over the decades, taking on largely negative connotations, because of its association with a small subset of materials (albeit large by volume), most of which are either toxic, a pollution problem, or both.
AFAIU, in industry "plastics" is just a blanket term for moldable organic materials that chemists are constantly inventing. They're not necessarily sourced from petroleum, nor necessarily toxic. It's a ridiculously huge category of material, and plastics really were and probably always will figure prominently in our future. And I would assume that some traditional, even edible materials have been subsumed into the plastics category given the general scope of the term and the industry itself.