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Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

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Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#71

Post by lazide »

seer wrote: post #38
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #22

No time soon... Plastics are mostly a by product of petroleum refining so it's hard to beat the economic factors. And the manufacturing machines have been in use for so long that they are completely paid for so adding one more plastic whatever is relatively cheap compared to any new gizmo. At this point the only way to stop plastic products is to subsidize a replacement to the point of making it cheaper than plastic…

Well yeah they are “cheap” to produce but expensive to clean up and dispose of. As long as governments “subsidize” plastics by cleaning after them themselves rather than forcing manufacturers to pay for it, you will have straws and plastic trash on the streets/parks/rivers/oceans. The funny thing is that we are _already_ paying for it with all the trash handling infrastructure - mostly government payed and supported…

Plastic is not expensive to clean up and dispose of at all.

It’s perfectly fine to literally bury alongside everything else.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#72

Post by nkozyra »

vore wrote: post #65
nkozyra wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the meme? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=betteridge's+law&type=comment

I think a "meme" is more than "gets mentioned a lot."

Given the person who I replied to didn't know there was a name for it, I think it was warranted.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#73

Post by sn41 »

csande17 wrote: post #2

Plastic packaging protects food from moisture and dirt. If you make the packaging out of a water-soluble material and then eat it, surely that's almost completely useless? Like, now you need some kind of additional outer wrapper to stop your edible packaging from getting contaminated. The article mentions muffin liners as an alternative use case, but those are usually made of thin paper and are already compostable.

Another point to add: rodents. This is an issue in large warehouses, in humid climates. Plastic is more resilient against rodents, since it is not edible.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#74

Post by RF_Savage »

I doubt it can do it for many items.

But at the same time, it could replace some in some applications and that is worth doing.

Anything that lowers the amount of plastics being used and contributes towards it is a good thing. It does need to replace all and every use of transparent plastics, but even some is good. And I don't believe we can find a silver bullet biopolymer that 1:1 replaces or even exceeds plastic for all usecases rightaway.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#75

Post by cseleborg »

This seems unsustainable. Cranberry fields forever?

Seriously, we need legally imposed limits on the use of single-use plastic wrapping, a correction of the economics and a change in habits.

Our family consumes two kinds of crispbread. One manufacturer (Wasa) uses paper for its wrapping. The other (FinnCrisp) use a plastic wrapping inside a carton box. That's just absurd.

Other products may not have a single-use alternative, like meat. Consigned containers is a solution here, already widely in use for beverages in many countries.

As long as manufacturers can get away with wrapping stuff in plastic, they will. We need to pressure them into finding alternatives.

As someone else pointed out here, we are paying a high price already for the damage we're doing to the environment (waste collection infrastructure, rising insurance prices, tax-funded repairs after natural disasters). If we folded those costs into the prices of the products most responsible for them, and added some legislation on top, we could change quite a few habits in relatively little time. It just needs someone with guts to make those decisions, which is something in rather short supply, at least here in Germany...

End of rant.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#76

Post by radu_floricica »

This is a very good time for this link:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental... (look at the last graph, with averages).

This is the kind of misguided environmentalism that does a lot more harm than good. It's not fashionable to say so, but plastic is a trivial issue on pretty much every possible count - when you do the math. Trying to "fix" it on the other hand often makes our lives miserable (paper straws) or just plain backfires massively. Growing cranberries takes energy, which for the foreseeable future means oil. Want to bet how much oil is being burned to grow a ton of cranberry film, and compare it with just turning that oil directly intro plastic?

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#77

Post by Mistletoe »

radu_floricica wrote: post #76

This is a very good time for this link: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental... (look at the last graph, with averages). This is the kind of misguided environmentalism that does a lot more harm than good. It's not fashionable to say so, but plastic is a trivial issue on pretty much every possible count - when you do the math. Trying to "fix" it on the other hand often makes our lives miserable…

There is no bar for the massive amount of plastic trash we are putting in the ocean there though. The cranberry film would be about microplastics and damage to wildlife, not greenhouse gas emissions.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#78

Post by kupfer »

cseleborg wrote: post #75

This seems unsustainable. Cranberry fields forever? Seriously, we need legally imposed limits on the use of single-use plastic wrapping, a correction of the economics and a change in habits. Our family consumes two kinds of crispbread. One manufacturer (Wasa) uses paper for its wrapping. The other (FinnCrisp) use a plastic wrapping inside a carton box. That's just absurd. Other products may not have a single-use alte…

The paper packaging of Wasa has a thin plastic liner, which you can see stretching by slowly tearing the paper. It is probably better that the thicker FinnCrisp plastic, but Wasa paper does not belong in the paper bin for recycling.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#79

Post by __turbobrew__ »

colordrops wrote: post #51

Why cant we just use a bunch of different sized reusable containers that you return to the store?

Yea. My elevator pitch for this is “shipping containers for everyday items”.

If we standardize on reusable container sizes then they can be returned, washed, and reprocessed back into the supply chain.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#80

Post by dr_dshiv »

cseleborg wrote: post #75

This seems unsustainable. Cranberry fields forever? Seriously, we need legally imposed limits on the use of single-use plastic wrapping, a correction of the economics and a change in habits. Our family consumes two kinds of crispbread. One manufacturer (Wasa) uses paper for its wrapping. The other (FinnCrisp) use a plastic wrapping inside a carton box. That's just absurd. Other products may not have a single-use alte…

Why is wrapping in thin plastic a problem if it prevents food waste? I think of the cucumbers covered in plastic. It’s a very small amount of plastic—and I imagine that it ends up saving energy if it means fewer cucumbers are wasted. Perhaps there is a way to model when plastic is “good” or “bad?”
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