Plastic is a huge problem for the environment. Vast amounts of it cover our land and fill the oceans, and the problem is now everywhere.

But plastic also has a good side: we need it, and there is no question that it revolutionised human life in the 20th century. Without plastic, recording music and films would not have been possible.

Modern medicine depends entirely on plastic: think of blood bags, tubing and syringes. So do parts of cars and aircraft, which let us travel quickly around the world. And of course computers, phones and all kinds of internet technology have been made possible by plastic.

Making plastic means burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which is responsible for climate change.

But what if we could find a way to make plastic mattresses, foam insulation, plastic cutlery or reusable food containers without emitting carbon dioxide, or even find something that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?

New technologies promise to turn emitted carbon dioxide into plastic, so as to reduce the amount of the gas released into the Earth's atmosphere. But how is this conversion possible? Let us look at the science behind it.

Plastics are synthetic polymers: a kind of long molecule whose units are linked to one another like a chain.

Source: BBC Bangla. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.