In The Future Your DVDs Could Be Air Polluted

The title of the article might be misconstrued as some kind of warning. I promise it’s actually good news. Like Ripley says, “believe it or not”, air pollutants might be found in your DVD collection in the near future. What’s even more unlikely is that it will be beneficial to the well being of the planet.

So just how could using air pollutants have anything to do with a copy of Braveheart? The answer is, researchers are looking into ways of creating plastic materials using carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers are trying to develop ways in which these carbon dioxide emissions could be used to create polycarbonates, a form of plastic. Polycarbonates are used to create all kinds of products we use in our everyday life; CDs, DVDs, bottles.

If and when researchers develop a means to create polycarbonates from carbon dioxide, the next step would be to find the resources needed. To find these emissions you need not look any further than your own vehicle. Carbon dioxide emissions are found in the burning of fossil fuels, most commonly in power plants and our gas powered vehicles. To gather resources, all it would take is sucking the emissions from a power plant, and VOILA, you have what you need to create polycarbonates.

The most obvious advantage of this research is the environmental impact it could have. By recycling carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, we would be making a huge step in combating global warming, or global climate change as my roommate likes to call it. Thomas Müller of the Institut für Technishe und Makromolekulare Chemie explains the impact of his teams research, “Using CO2 to create polycarbonates might not solve the total carbon dioxide problem, but it could be a significant contribution”