Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

academictimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 272 posts

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#81

Post by maxerickson »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #61
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of ocean plastic comes from Asia and Africa: http://odinafrica.org/about-us/news/217-90-percent-of-ocean-... . We need to prohibit Western companies from packaging food and FMCG for the developing world in plastic - until both the disposal infrastructure and societal attitudes around pollution and environmental management change. Or, charge those polluters to build that infrastructure or change those attitudes. H…

That's only because we were sending plastics to them to 'reprocess', and when those countries banned it, we were dumping it there illegally: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/malaysia-to-se...

My recycling is sorted on site at the county dump, with rejected stuff disposed of in the dump. No way are the bundles of material they sell being shipped to Asia for disposal, it doesn't make any sense at all.

That article is about the countries raising their standards for the sorted material they accept, not about the typical journey that Australian waste takes. Just think about what a non existent amount of material 100 tonnes is for a country of 25 million people. Millions of tons of waste a year just in NSW: https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/what-sydney-is-really-th...

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#82

Post by daslicious »

mrfusion wrote: post #17
dheera wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PLA is pretty useless as a material though for anything but art. Almost everything I print has a functional purpose and either (a) needs mechanical strength (b) will be placed outdoors in the California sun or (c) will be used to house electronics that may reach temperatures as high as 70-80 C. PLA is basically useless to me and pretty much all roboticists. I use PETG for almost everything because it works perfectly…

I’ve just been living with the downsides of pla. Should I just switch to petg? I have my printer in my bedroom though. Is petg toxi to breathe?

yikes, i thought 3d printers were high emitters of tiny plastic particles that are harmful to breath. Hope it's well ventilated

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#83

Post by maxerickson »

radicalbyte wrote: post #48
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of ocean plastic comes from Asia and Africa: http://odinafrica.org/about-us/news/217-90-percent-of-ocean-... . We need to prohibit Western companies from packaging food and FMCG for the developing world in plastic - until both the disposal infrastructure and societal attitudes around pollution and environmental management change. Or, charge those polluters to build that infrastructure or change those attitudes. H…

A lot of that plastic is shipped in from USA/EU.

Why would they buy plastic and throw it in the river? The US has plenty of landfill space, we aren't paying to ship plastic to Asia.

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#84

Post by da_big_ghey »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #76
da_big_ghey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would also cut reproduction rates, which is not pleasant but is necessary to stop climate change.

There are more species than humans who need to reproduce.

That is a good point, maybe something like one-child policy better serve this need. Or possibly we must consider which is worse for animals, damage from climate change or damage from endocrine disruptor.

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#85

Post by JulianMorrison »

rmason wrote: post #71
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #7

Plastic recycling seems heavily motivated by emotion and virtue signaling. In reality, only about 5% of our crude oil use goes towards plastic. If we rolled out EVs, and then just burned all the plastic trash (using waste-to-energy plants), we would still be far ahead. The biggest challenges with plastics are hormone disruption, and microplastics (particularly in the 3rd world without sufficient landfill or W2E infra…

I remember a time when everything was paper bags. Groceries and retailers went with plastic because it was cheaper. But with plastic there was a hidden cost. Now we're told we must pay a premium for recyclable plastic. Personally I'd rather pay a premium for paper because it's made from a renewable resource. Plus paper will decompose within two months in nature. The only drawback I can find is that paper bags take mo…

The solution, bags-wise, is reusable bags. I carry around several of the convenient, pack-into-a-ball variety. They're plastic, but they'll last me many many uses. When they eventually wear out, they should probably be incinerated. But in the meantime, I'm using plastic's advantage, it's long life, in my favour - rather than having it haunt me as waste.

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#86

Post by JulianMorrison »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #84
JulianMorrison wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more species than humans who need to reproduce.

That is a good point, maybe something like one-child policy better serve this need. Or possibly we must consider which is worse for animals, damage from climate change or damage from endocrine disruptor.

The answer is neither. Human energy use that causes climate harms can be replaced with renewables. Fuel can be replaced with batteries. In the longer term, the sun is absolutely pouring out energy, which largely goes to waste, and a Dyson swarm capturing a small fraction of that would satisfy the energy needs of a much larger population.

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#88

Post by da_big_ghey »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #86
da_big_ghey wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good point, maybe something like one-child policy better serve this need. Or possibly we must consider which is worse for animals, damage from climate change or damage from endocrine disruptor.

The answer is neither. Human energy use that causes climate harms can be replaced with renewables. Fuel can be replaced with batteries. In the longer term, the sun is absolutely pouring out energy, which largely goes to waste, and a Dyson swarm capturing a small fraction of that would satisfy the energy needs of a much larger population.

These are not solving land impact of human. We must have fewer human or live in smal space like in Tokyo and others city like it. Most human no have desire to do this. Batery take resources like lithium more than we have. Maybe Dyson swarm eating star energy output cause climate change of its own, fewer energy reaching earth surface. There is always impacts that human create. We only can for truly mitigate climate change with reducing human numbers. One action we take for to reduce impact create impact again in one other place. We swalow spider to catch fly and continue on each and again. One child policy is the forebest way for to accomplish.

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#89

Post by dEnigma »

beckman466 wrote: post #62
joshspankit wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic, but sometimes I feel like we could harvest the plastic from the ocean, make plastic bricks, and build millions of houses. Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that this is a viable solution to anything, or that it’s a good use of resources based on our current methodologies. I’m more just trying to say that there’s so much raw material out there and that it’s better if it comes out of the ocean. L…

Or... we could not use so much plastic, and make actual bricks to build ‘millions of houses’. Since you sound so excited, are you going to live in the first plastic house with your family? I think suggestions like this are super demeaning. I often see them coming from privileged knowledge workers, who are eager to share ‘free ideas‘/psuedo-solutions as a sort of ‘charity’ for poor people (and people in the global sou…

You're reading a lot into that short parent comment. Maybe you should be a bit more generous in your interpretation of other people's words.

Re: New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

#90

Post by tachyonbeam »

dawnerd wrote: post #38
tachyonbeam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should recycle plastic if we can, or better yet, switch to other materials that are easier to recycle. For example, glass bottles can just be sent back to the factory, washed and reused. This is already done for beer and wine AFAIK. It could be done for milk and every other kind of drinks as well. However, if we fail to recycle plastic, isn't burying plastic in a landfill, in a way, a form of carbon captur…

If by sent back you mean crushed then yeah sure bottles are reused. Oregon for example breaks the bottles when you return them to prevent fraud.

Thankfully that's not the case everywhere: https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_averag...
Post reply on HN