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I was asked to comment on silicone on a zero waste group's fb page recently, and this is what I wrote:
Silicone is made of a silica backbone, not a hydrocarbon like plastic. Platinum silicone is very pure (tin catalyst leave impuritites), and needs no plasticizers to stabilize or make flexible, no bisphenols, no pvc, no phthalates.
It's also very UV insensitive so no stabilizers there either. U can heat it and freeze it and sterilize it with UVleds, which gets me to the other super awesome thing about platinum silicone- it has a smaller carbon footprint than stainless, plastic or glass.
Glass is rarely recycled and breaks easily, so not great for continual reuse. Stainless has a huge carbon footprint (u literally have to burn coal to carbonize it), and is also hugely consumptive to recycle.
Plastic is a terrible recycler too, pyrolysis is an ugly preposterous abuser of water and air, and energy reclaimation (sp?) is losing a energy consumption physics battle as well (going from a liquid to a solid for a single use, and then a small percentage of it being superheated back into a liquid to then turn into a gas, is insane).
Platinum silicone, and the process I pioneered and I like to call infini-repurposing, is a bit of a miracle in itsself. It's flexible, durable, non-emitting, steriizable with UV (smallest footprint by far), AND because it's so stable, it can be ground up into a squishy sand that can then be added to new platinum silicone (up to 70% recycled material) and press molded into new extremely useful products, like non leaching, non cracking, UV insensitive, thermal insensitive products like roofing tiles and pool liners. Platinum silicone, infini repurposing, and some decent design is the absolute best way to replace the physical nonsense of plastic.
I should mention that infini-repurposing can be done by hand, so picture platinum silicone bags lids, straws (lol) in Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Columbia, Guatemala.... replacing this paramount source of plastic flowing to the ocean, with a clean replacement with not only plastic and carbon reduction impact, but also creating cottage industry and opportunity in the developing world (anyone with a hand grinding machine and some platinum silicone and a mold, could lay these products out in the sun to "dry" (heat actually) like mud bricks. I honestly believe platinum silicone could save the world :)
