June 15, 2007

Products Made From Petroleum: YIKES!!

With gas prices rising, there's lots of talk about how to be more efficient with the car. There's car pooling. There's doing errands in a strategized way (no more zig-zagging around town). Some are taking the bus to work, and yesterday I saw a neighbor rolling a shiny new wheelie cart of groceries home from the store.

These are all great things, but Big Oil impacts our daily lives much more than in our gas tanks. According to Rankin Energy, one 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline. The rest of that barrel goes into making other products - Rankin estimates there are over 6000 items using oil in their manufacturing.

Here's a partial list of products with petroleum as an ingredient (this is only a small sample):

nylon zippers
ballet tights
plastic hangers
pantyhose
permanent press clothing
flip flops/thongs
fake fur
polyester clothing
ball point pens
ink
computer diskettes
computers
copiers
magic markers
telephones
microfilm
cameras
earphones
footballs
knitting needles
tennis racquets
golf balls
baby aspirin
stuffed animals
band aids
Vaseline
rubbing alcohol
Pepto-Bismol
hair coloring
soap
cough syrup
hair spray
lipstick
denture adhesives
trash bags
egg cartons
freezer bags
candles
wax paper
nylon spatulas
Teflon pans
Formica
linoleum
garden hoses
plungers
floor wax
Plexiglas
spray paint
Anti-freeze
balloons
dog toys
flea collars
CDROMs
check book covers
shopping bags
video cassettes
credit cards
dice
watch bands


Sources: Illinois Department of Natural Resources; Rankin Energy

See also: 16 CFR 1700 (February 16, 1997)(OnlineDOCID:fr26fe97-25)(Consumer Product Safety Commission, Proposed RuleMaking: Household Products Containing Petroleum Distillates and Other
Hydrocarbons)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good website. Very useful. Here are 2 sites of mine to look at: www.superrxcard.com or www.caregiverdiscounts.com . They are dedicated to distributing free drug cards good at 54,000 pharmacies,most major chains too. 100% free,I do not sell anything on these sites. My card is a way to save on average 32% on your medicines,depends on specific medicine. Hope this is something you will check out. No gimmicks.

Anonymous said...

Steve, what on earth does that have to do with minimizing our petroleum product consumption???

Steve said...

Sorry. My post was for a different and unrelated article. I don't know how it ended up posted here as a comment.

Anonymous said...

Don't be sorry Steve, any positive info is good and people should be more appreciative

Shelby said...

i had to do a project on "20 things made from petroleum" and i looked for days..until i found this...!!!!! this was really helpful to me...i hope i get a good grade *crosses fingers* :) thanx so much for the help!!!

Anonymous said...

So oil's pretty much used to make everything... So what's gonna happen when were far into the peak period?

Anonymous said...

No worries. You and I will be long dead and gone.

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