PLASTICS have developed an amazing presence in our lives. From the most commonplace tasks to our most unusual needs. In fact, if you woke up tomorrow and there were no plastics, you would be in for quite a shock. Life would be much more expensive and much less comfortable.

 

Realizing that plastic consumption is not going to cease to exist we must seek to provide ways to minimize the impact such materials have as they reach the end of their consumer life.

 

Plastic shopping sacks are, as most consumables, used only once and then discarded. Annually the US produces over 130 million pounds of resin film used to make bags. (Wikipedia) Of this, the Polyethylene or PE, family of plastics make up 86% of total bag material. (plasticsresource.com) Although plastic bags can recycle cleaner than paper, finding a way to reuse all these bags as insulation would save vast amounts of energy from being used to recycle bags and manufacture traditional Fiberglass Batt insulation.

 

It is from this standpoint that we set out to see if indeed, plastic bags offer high R-values in building applications.