Career Guidance / Rubber & Plastic Technology Engineering

“Plastic should be a high value material… [It] should be in products that last a long time, and at the end of the life, you recycle it. To take oil or natural gas that took millions of years to produce and then to make a disposable product that last minutes or seconds, and then to just discard it–I think that’s not a good way of using this resource.” ~Robert Haley “The rubber industry is of much significance to our countries. For millions of our smallholders, the rubber tree is a tree of life, serving as a crucial source of income for earning a living and raising families.” ~Thaksin Shinawatra Rubber Technology is the subject dealing with the transformation of rubbers or elastomers into useful products, such as automobile tires, rubber mats and, stretching bands. The materials include latex, natural rubber, synthetic rubber and other polymeric materials, such as thermoplastic elastomers. Many of the production methods used for plastics are also applicable to rubbers. However, rubber processing technology is different in certain respects, and the rubber industry is largely separate from the plastics industry. Plastics engineering encompasses the processing, designing, development, and manufacturing of plastics products. A plastic is a polymeric material that is in a semi-liquid state, having the property of plasticity and exhibiting flow.