Post #3784997

Those of us who haven played Satisfactory already know that plastic is basically free. Whether you're extracting natural gas or oil, it comes with monomer by-products like ethylene and propylene. They might sound familiar, because they are the base molecules cross-linked into plastics like high-density polyethylene (milk jugs) and polypropylene (which is the plastic part of all your metallized/mylar-style chip bags, and even things like your polycarbonate water bottles start off as propylene extracted from the ground). Right now about 10% of petroleum and natural gas are extracted and converted into plastics, and that's expected to grow as Asia and Africa modernize and consumerize, especially as petroleum demand tapers off due to electrification. But it's also relatively straightforward to make ethylene - some of the bioplastics packaging products you can buy right now are made from ethylene produced from fermented corn and sugarcane. Propylene's trickier though - there are plenty of processes, but right now they're all fairly expensive relative to getting it for "free" out of the ground as a by-product. Anyway, right now, propylene and ethylene aren't just basically free -- they are byproducts that need to be processed in order to free up capacity to extract more fuel. So next time you go shopping and drive your automobile and burn 8 lbs of fuel to get there and back, make sure you buy at least 1 lb of gross plastic packaging or other plastic products to make sure to keep your consumption in balance.