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‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

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Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#51

Post by eyivghh »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #39
Synaesthesia wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plastics/oil industry mislead the public and government about how recyclable plastic is (it's not) to prevent legislation from passing which would reduce unnecessary plastics. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

It has been at least a decade since the futility of plastic recycling has been known. Any politician that tries to rectify the plastic situation will get voted out because people would experience a reduction in quality of life. It is the same reason why the solution to reducing carbon emissions has not been enacted worldwide, which is increasing taxes on fossil fuels until consumption goes down (which would also solv…

“A decade since”

Its been known since Flory Higgins back in the 1940s, and DeGennes completed the understanding in the 70s: the crux of the problem is melted plastics dont mix.

If anything in the last few decades methods for recycling plastic have been investigated fairly successfully. But they’re either expensive (sort plastic, return to feedstock), or have image problems (burn in thermal plants, turn into diesel).

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#52

Post by jokethrowaway »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #42
triceratops wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has been at least a decade since the futility of plastic recycling has been known. To you. Not to the general population.

I do not think it would make a difference. Replace plastic recycling with the harms of carbon emissions, surely that has been known by sufficiently many people. When push comes to shove, sacrifices on a collective basis are hard to make. Especially when you can point to others that are not making them.

Not to put down carbon emissions, but microplastic pollution is a much much much worse problem to have

I'd rather not eat a credit card every year.

And the sacrifice would be to have nice glass containers like we use to have? How is that even a sacrifice?

The fact that governments and the media talk only about carbon emission (without doing much, if I can add - they gave plenty of time to the oil titans to diversify their investments) and don't do anything for plastic is already telling you which industry owns your governments.

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#53

Post by lotsofpulp »

triceratops wrote: post #46
lotsofpulp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it would make a difference. Replace plastic recycling with the harms of carbon emissions, surely that has been known by sufficiently many people. When push comes to shove, sacrifices on a collective basis are hard to make. Especially when you can point to others that are not making them.

Oh yeah totally, I'm in agreement with the rest of your post. It's just that in my personal experience most people are extremely ignorant of what can be recycled. They don't even read the flyer their local garbage company gives them. The state of the recycling bin in my apartment complex is an absolute disgrace.

Ever since I was a kid in the early 90s, I always wonder how it was possible that the logistics of recycling sorting could possibly work. How could recycling even happen if all this plastic needs to be sorted into 10 categories and then paper (but not greased paper) and metal and etc. Not only would the system have to account for people who made errors in sorting the recycling, but the system would have to account for the people who do not care to sort it.

So was the world was asking individuals to recycle, and was employing legions of people at the waste facility to double check all the recycling. But then why ask people to bother sorting in the first place? And how would it even be possible to double check and sort all that plastic? It just did not pass the smell test.

And then of course it finally came out that we were just packing it up and shipping it back to China where they did who knows what with it. Gave everyone in the US political points and plausible deniability.

Anyway, I consider recycling to be worth near zero. At this point, the only mitigation is reduce, then a far way down is reuse, and that is it.

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#54

Post by eyivghh »

triceratops wrote: post #41
lotsofpulp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been at least a decade since the futility of plastic recycling has been known. Any politician that tries to rectify the plastic situation will get voted out because people would experience a reduction in quality of life. It is the same reason why the solution to reducing carbon emissions has not been enacted worldwide, which is increasing taxes on fossil fuels until consumption goes down (which would also solv…

> It has been at least a decade since the futility of plastic recycling has been known. To you. Not to the general population.

And to experts since the 1940s.

Also, before I studied material science (and therefore became an “expert”), I had heard that plastics are difficult to recycle in the mass media - as a teenager in the 90s. The information was there in a digestible form, but most ppl ignored it because it was easier to pretend that we were doing something with our blue bins.

I have clear recollections in undergrad (not mtls science) of throwing plastic into the garbage and getting lectured about it. And lecturing back that recycled plastic isn't really a thing.

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#55

Post by eyivghh »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #15
pizza234 wrote: post #2

Something I don't fully understand is why single-use plastics are still in use. Every once in a while, a replacement is advertised, but still not used. The reasons I can think of are: 1. cost - this could be an very simple reason; 2. conflictual requirement - the supposition that chemical indestructibility is what makes plastic at the same time necessary but problematic. Is there any other factor/complexity I'm missi…

The plastics/oil industry mislead the public and government about how recyclable plastic is (it's not) to prevent legislation from passing which would reduce unnecessary plastics. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

Plastic is recyclable though. 3D printing guys do it all the time when they spin their own fiber out of left over junk.

And “made out of recyclable plastic” is a thing, and it works.

What isnt recyclable are mixed plastics, ie consumer plastic. But industrial users (ie folks who have large quantities of the same thing so sorting is cheap) can and do recycle plastic.

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#57

Post by lotsofpulp »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #52
lotsofpulp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it would make a difference. Replace plastic recycling with the harms of carbon emissions, surely that has been known by sufficiently many people. When push comes to shove, sacrifices on a collective basis are hard to make. Especially when you can point to others that are not making them.

Not to put down carbon emissions, but microplastic pollution is a much much much worse problem to have I'd rather not eat a credit card every year. And the sacrifice would be to have nice glass containers like we use to have? How is that even a sacrifice? The fact that governments and the media talk only about carbon emission (without doing much, if I can add - they gave plenty of time to the oil titans to diversify…

> And the sacrifice would be to have nice glass containers like we use to have? How is that even a sacrifice?

The sacrifice is less consumption, due to prices rising because costs of using glass containers is more. See how pissed off people in the US get when gas prices rise.

When gas prices rise, people have to cut back on all consumption, and that pisses off the voting population like nothing else.

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#58

Post by breakfastduck »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #7
ramraj07 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because single use plastics are transformatively essentially for the entire modern way of life? Until we acknowledge that reality any solution will only sound hypocritical and be ineffective in the end. The only real solution I see for plastic waste is just to incinerate it and try to build carbon capture plants to undo that fire.

>The only real solution I see for plastic waste is just to incinerate it and try to build carbon capture plants to undo that fire. I am cool with incinerating and carbon capturing if the Petro-chemical manufacturers pay for it directly or indirectly. The Coca-Cola, Nestle, Procter & Gambles, Unilever etc. need to own up to their sustainability talk. The externalization of the health and environmental plastic costs ne…

I wouldn't trust any of those organisations to actually do it cleanly if my life depended on it.

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#59

Post by unknown_error »

Gravityloss wrote: post #47
dairyleia wrote: post #33

I read it as 'Vegan Spider Milk' and was really confused about how they give consent to be milked, and where they're milked from.

The spiders are vegans, eating soybean instead of flies?

They can actually choose whether they want to be milked every morning.

One line leads to a tiny milking station. There, retired surgeons use designer nanopumps to relieve silk gland tensions. The spiders appreciate it and get a tiny block of tofu fly treat afterward.

The spiders who don't want to be milked that particular day can instead enjoy a relaxing day. They other like goes to the relaxation area, full of empty corners ready for cobwebbing and prismed sunbeams that emulate natural variances in brightness. When the surgeons are done with milking, they provide enrichment in the form of RF nanodrones, made from recycled cat toys, to stimulate web strands and act as nontoxic prey substitutes.

Unfortunately accidents do happen, since even the tiniest drone tends to be several orders of magnitude larger than the biggest spider volunteers. Sometimes they exhibit something more akin to a panic reaction than relaxation. Steps are taken to minimize these irregular adverse events, but a balance towards profitability must be enforced.

All in all, like with most vegan products, the quality is much lower but the price can be much higher. It all works out as long as nobody asks too many questions.

Re: ‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

#60

Post by boston_clone »

unknown_error wrote: post #59
Gravityloss wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spiders are vegans, eating soybean instead of flies?

They can actually choose whether they want to be milked every morning. One line leads to a tiny milking station. There, retired surgeons use designer nanopumps to relieve silk gland tensions. The spiders appreciate it and get a tiny block of tofu fly treat afterward. The spiders who don't want to be milked that particular day can instead enjoy a relaxing day. They other like goes to the relaxation area, full of empty…

It seems rude to trivialize efforts that reduce the unnecessary suffering and killing of billions of animals every year, don’t you think?

The last paragraph is ripe with ignorance, too.

What exactly were you trying to achieve with your comment?

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