Question: If the plastic you made was biodegradable, would it still be Perspex? Can you justify why it is important that we continue to produce what is the most abundant plastic in the UK, when it is already the most abundant? How much Perspex does your method make? Is it the same quality?

Laura Schofield answered on 11 Nov 2014:

Hi Joe. I love that you are so intrigued by my process. It is awesome! I’ve replied to your comment about would biodegradable perspex still be perspex, but just to combine the answers here’s what it said: “Strictly speaking no it wouldn’t be. Perspex is a trade name for a specific plastic, poly(methyl methacrylate) to be precise! To make it biodegradable, we would have to alter the structure of it so it wouldn’t be poly(methyl methacrylate) any more but it means it could get a new, cooler name!”
It is the most abundant at the moment because we use so much of it. All of the signs you see above shops, screens on mobile phones, windows in aquariums and even the plastic lenses in some glasses are made from perspex. The aim would be to be able to recycle the perspex completely so we wouldn’t need to keep making so much, but at the moment we can’t recycle plastic to the same quality it was originally. Therefore, we need to keep making new plastic that is of a high quality. If we continue to use fossil fuels, like oil, to make what we call bulk chemicals (ones that we make huge quantities of) we will run out of oil pretty soon so we need to change the way we make them. One way is to use my process and use fruit peel. Perhaps a more perfect way to do it would be to use fruit peel to make a biodegradable or fully recyclable plastic but unfortunately we don’t have the technology to do that yet. Hopefully my process will provide a stop-gap until we have that sort of technology though!
In my lab, I can make a few hundred grams of perspex in a week but there is a company in Middlesbrough that have scaled up my process a little and they can make several kilograms in a week so it’s already pretty good. Obviously the end goal is to make tons of perspex every day but we are on the way!
It is of almost identical quality! The only issue we are facing at the moment is how to process it at the end. With the commercial processes that make perspex at the moment, they are making tons a day and so have perfect ways to finish the product off at the end. We can’t use those same ways because we are working on a much smaller scale, so we have to use what we can to polish it. I have 2 pieces of perspex in my flat and I can’t tell the difference between which I made and the one from the commercial method!