Plastic surgery is a thing that we have acknowledged for decades, but what about plastic skin care products? No, we are not going to talk about plastic contamination in common skin care products, but rather skin care products made of plastics.
What makes it better is, the plastic that can be turned into skin care products is not the ones at the bottom chain of the production. Using the new technology, what would be turned into skin care products is plastic waste that we know littering the earth.
Even better, the final product is going to be safe for human use, because the very thing produced by the plastic waste conversion has already been used in our common skin care products nowadays. This breakthrough should be heard by more people.
Here, in this article, we are going to talk about the ‘plastic skin care products’ technology, and things surrounding it.
Glycolic Acid
Frost of all, we should talk about glycolic acid. This chemical is a kind of hygroscopic crystalline solid that comes without any smell or color. Glycolic acid is also known to be highly soluble in water and widespread in nature.
The chemical is often used in skin care products, usually for dead skin removal or peeling effects. It works by breaking down the bonds connecting our outer layers of skin cells, thus the effect of ‘cleansing’ our skin can be achieved.
People also often use it to fight acne, because glycolic acid can help us remove the gunk, such as dead skin cell or oil, clogging up our pores. It usually result in less acne breakouts when our pores are open and clear.
According to Healthline, glycolic acid can also help our outer skin barrier to retain moisture. For those who are fighting acne problem, this feature of glycolic acid is superior to other anti-acne agents such as benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid which make the skin drier.
In addition to those, this acid also has antioxidant and antibacterial feature. Furthermore, it can also stimulate the growth of our skin collagen. This is the reason why recently glycolic acid is one of the most favored skin care products.
Turning Plastic into Skin Care Products
Now, let’s talk about the real topic of this article. Recently, a group of researchers at University of Cambridge developed a technology that can help us to convert greenhouse gasses and plastic waste into useful things using renewable energy.
One of the useful things is glycolic acid we talked about. It means, in the future, we may be able to get skin care products produced from recycled plastic waste. Maybe the glycolic acid you are going to use in the future is still floating on the Great Pacific garbage patch.
Actually, such kind of thing has been done before, but without using renewable energy. The fact that now we can use renewable energy using the technology being developed in Cambridge University means we can go greener even more.
“Converting waste into something useful using solar energy is a major goal of our research. Plastic pollution is a huge problem worldwide, and often, many of the plastics we throw into recycling bins are incinerated or end up in landfill,” said the paper’s author Professor Erwin Reisner from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.
It may become a game changer in our war against plastic waste. Maybe one day we will not see plastic as an enemy, but an endless resource that can be recycled into something even more useful with the help of technology.
Not Only Skin Care Products
The thing about what we are currently talking about is that the result of the production is not only skin care products. There is another product has even bigger impact which is sustainable fuel that we can convert into energy.
Just like the law of conservation of energy stated, energy is not something that would be destroyed and can only be converted. It means plastic at its own form is a conversion of energy into a matter, and the researchers have found a way to convert back that energy into another form of energy we can use.
Converting plastic into a kind of fuel is actually not a new thing, actually. However, it used to be a redundant and costly process because it requires a lot of energy. But by utilizing abundant solar power, the researchers could finally tackle this basic problem.
“Generally, CO2 conversion requires a lot of energy, but with our system, basically you just shine a light at it, and it starts converting harmful products into something useful and sustainable,” said the study’s co-first author Dr Motiar Rahaman.
The basic form of fuel is called syngas, and it is a sustainable fuel in the form of liquid. The only problem left is that the quality might not be that good for now, but we can improve in the future. “Prior to this system, we didn’t have anything that could make high-value products selectively and efficiently,” said Rahaman.
Greener Ideas Mean Greener Planet
This ground breaking discovery is a simple example of how ‘talking green’ is the best choice for us. As mentioned above, the process of converting plastic into fuels and other useful products used to be hampered with the high cost and energy consumption.
However, by utilizing free energy provided by the star of our solar system, we can finally solve the puzzle. With rapid advancement of technology in this era, and the only problem left is about improving the quality of the final product, we are not so far from perfection.
We are not so far from finally tackling our plastic problem, and it is our choice to whether make the gap shorter or longer. We can make it shorter by stop putting more plastic waste into our environment, and we will make the gap even longer otherwise.
This is our only planet, and this is our choice whether to heal it or keep harming it. Do not forget that this is also the only planet that our children will live in the future.
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