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Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

modernfarmer.com

121–130 of 141 posts

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#121
post #100
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a container for your wrapped product? That gets full of random lint and dust? Meh.

This is how your parents and grandparents lived. Stuff got dirty, and instead of tossing it after having used it once, they.. washed it! When I go shopping, I: * bring my own bag * buy oat, rice, sugar, pasta, chocolate etc in bulk (w/ textile bags I bring) * refill detergent containers in-shop * buy fruit & veg without packaging .. and I have no meaningful reduction of my living standard. I know it's difficult to ma…

And all of them switched to the current state of affairs the moment they could. Their parents too.

Weird huh?

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#122
post #73
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.

For rats, cats, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks, and mice (standard warehouse dwellers) the digesting part of plastic isn't the main issue. The plastic may attract them, but the edible content in the plastic bags is often the target. Plastic of nearly any make is easily torn through (chewing, clawing, knawing, etc.) but the shear amount of plastic either as bag or pallet-wrap is the real issue, all over the world.

We need to at least start replacing the pallet-wrap with non-petroleum material.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#123
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, if you're curious about the insights from somebody who's crusty enough to make their own protein bars :) If you care about avoiding "processed foods" in other domains and are consuming shrink-wrapped bars with a shelf life of 2+ months: here be dragons! I store ours in a glass container the refrigerator, where they're individually wrapped in butcher paper. I'd consider them good outside of the fridge (in the pa…

I find most "protein" bars, processed or unprocessed, are relatively low in protein and function more like energy bars, meal replacement bars, or even weight gainers. I expect the ones made without processed ingredients like protein powders to be especially in that category. Not that there's anything necessarily bad about that, but it does bug me when folk label products as "high" in protein when all the protein come…

As I understand it, there's disagreement on how efficiently the body absorbs/digests the protein latent in protein powder. Especially when it's in a "dry" form most commonly found in protein bars.

I totally agree re the disappointing macro-nutritional composition of most protein bars. Especially disappointing (to me) is the sugar content and its source (typically rice syrup or corn syrup).

After computing the macros for homemade bars, it's hard to feel like you're getting much bang for the buck with those bars -- it feels like you're better off eating some dried and mixed nuts.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#124
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a container for your wrapped product? That gets full of random lint and dust? Meh.

You seem quite hell-bent on denouncing containers. Yet, a good container with a plastic seal on the lid will keep your food completely clean and be pretty airtight to keep it fresh for a while.

‘Hell-bent’? Really?

I use reusable containers for 90% of the stuff I use, especially tools, projects, etc.

I also use glass reusable containers all the time for food, as they don’t soak up weird smells and stains that can’t be cleaned out, and have bacterial problems and leeching issues like reusable plastic containers.

They aren’t practical for anywhere they’ll be exposed to impacts a lot or weight matters, like kids lunches or whatever, so I use plastic ones there.

But I’m under no illusions that any of those make any sense whatsoever for large scale food distribution, and neither should anyone else.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#125
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was news to me, although I guess I'm not surprised. It's frustratingly difficult to buy groceries at the supermarket without plastic.

We compost many things at home, but cardboard boxes around food are a minefield. Most look like cardboard, but after you compost them you'll be picking out the plastic sheet that was bonded into them. One that particularly annoys me are cat food boxes. The cat food is separately wrapped (in unrecyclable foil-bonded-plastic, of course), and then the cardboard box containing those packets has a hidden plastic layer - f…

We shred all cardboard that's not shiny. Generally you can feel if there's a coating. I will also be picking out plastic from our soil for years, but you use the resources you have. It's a worthwhile tradeoff IMHO.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#126
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this specific bio-material probably doesn't make sense for moisture and dirt. However, the bio-plastics made from shellfish leftovers (think: crab, lobster, shrimp) would be appropriate for this. The problem with petroleum based products (Styrofoam, plastics) is that they are crazy cheap due to our oil based economy. At some point the economics of that industry will change, and with it the prevailing winds on u…

> shellfish leftovers There's nowhere near enough of that and it's a natural resource we are already plundering at brutal levels.

I don't think that this is feasible, but shellfish molt quite frequently. They generally consume the molted shell, though.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not sufficient macroeconomic justification to push the shellfish remains biofilm forward. See Cobra Effect [1]. This is reflexivity in action [2]. In the first year you start manufacturing this biofilm, your sentiment is true, it is using waste stream. In the Nth year, fisheries are collapsing shrimp stocks, flooding markets with shrimp to extract what used to be a waste stream to eke out ever decreasing margi…

Or you just consume the entirety of the waste stream and then stop because it's a low value marginal add on product that doesn't drive an industry. It's not like the demand for cow manure is driving us to create brand new herds simply to output more manure.

Right now what saves us from the cobra effect with such a biofilm is hydrocarbon-based plastics are cheaper than it and the distribution and manufacturing networks are built around them. I'd be perfectly content with no concerns if there are no subsidies tampering with such biofilms; let them organically develop their own markets, manufacturing networks and supply chains, and I completely agree with you that they will naturally stop.

If well-intentioned government subsidies aggressively push for using the waste stream however (about the only way I see such a biofilm ever ramping up beyond niche markets), then it is very difficult to conceive those policy makers calibrating to the same homeostatic outcome. That's not how the plastics industry works. The demand scale is on such a bonkers level that distorts normal incentives.

I always worry about such reflexivity when these breathless articles come out about alternative production-side solutions to our current plastics production-consumption matrix. It's way more complex and large than most people understand outside that industry.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#128
post #121
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how your parents and grandparents lived. Stuff got dirty, and instead of tossing it after having used it once, they.. washed it! When I go shopping, I: * bring my own bag * buy oat, rice, sugar, pasta, chocolate etc in bulk (w/ textile bags I bring) * refill detergent containers in-shop * buy fruit & veg without packaging .. and I have no meaningful reduction of my living standard. I know it's difficult to ma…

And all of them switched to the current state of affairs the moment they could. Their parents too. Weird huh?

Correction: the moment they thought they could

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who's "we"? I'm pretty sure developing countries don't throw plastic in the ocean, if only because there is already a non-green much more profitable alternative: burn it. In Europe there is a well set up "recycling" industry that takes plastic and burns it at high temperatures for applications like cement making. Not great, not terrible, and definitely not throwing away money in the sea.

The post I posted below from TreeHugger is specifically about Europe.

Re: Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?

#130
Unfortunately the very properties that make plastics sit around in landfills - their resistance to being broken down by the environment or living organisms - are exactly the properties you want for packaging. You either find good methods of recycling or disposing good packaging material, or you change your behavior so that you're utilizing less packaging material. Anything that could be replaced by a dissolvable film probably doesn't need to be there in the first place.
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