Live data from Hacker News

Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

sdstate.edu

101–110 of 351 posts

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#101
post #95
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t you bring plastic bags from home? They are very much reusable, you don’t have to throw them out. They are also quite easy to fold into small shapes and keep on you, or your car, or whatever. I have plastic bags which have endured for literal years. I also decided early on that if I forget to bring a bag, I either do without or have to go back to get one. You start remembering really fast after a few times o…

This. HDPE lasts. So reuse it. Cardboard not so much, but where I live one can just take how many boxes one can haul off various shops and they will just thank you.

You can bring your own, non-plastic bags. I do wonder if maybe some cultures just don't have this and so the deprecation of plastic bags has left everyone quite confused.

It's a very solved problem, has been for centuries probably. You can even get some with little wheels! If you absolutely can't handle the looseness of the fruits amongst your shopping, you could use string nets.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#102

I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.

SAME. It kills me inside when people wrap things like fruits and potatoes in plastic that have natural peel they'll remove before eating anyways

Japan is wild for this, but also pretty good at recycling plastic in general.

Bananas are often wrapped individually for sale. You buy a box of biscuits and they're often individually wrapped in plastic etc.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#104

I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.

People dramatically over weight how bad plastic is for the environment. The impact of a 10 min car ride = 10,000+ plastic bags of emissions. And in first world countries almost no household plastic ends up in the environment.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#105

It's a miraculous thing corporations have done convincing us that we're the ones polluting the environment.

Corporations don't do things that people don't want to pay for.

The entire purpose of their existence is to provide products to customers that want them.

The miraculous thing is people eschewing responsibility by putting blaming the person selling products to the people that want them.

If ot weren't for all those drug dealers, we wouldn't have any addicts.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#106

I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.

> I just raw dog the produce into my basket

It's crazy, and how fast "glazed" became commonplace.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#107
post #104

I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.

People dramatically over weight how bad plastic is for the environment. The impact of a 10 min car ride = 10,000+ plastic bags of emissions. And in first world countries almost no household plastic ends up in the environment.

Can't imagine this survives napkin scrutiny. A ten mile drive isn't using nearly as much hydrocarbon mass as 10k plastic bags. While most of the plastic hopefully winds up in a landfill, most of the gasoline is water and carbon dioxide by the end. It's tires versus bags. While tires shed, the mass lost in 10min is definitely quite a bit lower than 10k bags or the fraction that escapes the waste pipeline.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#108
post #100
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is PET not a hydrocarbon (for the purposes of burning it)? It's (C10 H8 O4)n the oxygen makes it not technically a hydrocarbon, but it will burn just fine and cleanly. Your point about building waste is valid, but I think most of that stuff goes in dumpsters and can be directed to a different wasting handling.

Hah. We burned shavings/rejects from a polyester-resin+glass boat building.. in a 200L drum. That was quite smoky and smelly, but still I think better than just shipping it all off for burying in a landfill. And fiberglass decomposed basically into fine sand too.

Environmentally speaking, shipping it off to a landfill would have been orders of magnitude better; burning it released thousands or millions of times more pollution. Most polyester resins are aromatic, so incomplete combustion can produce a wide variety of quite toxic substances.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#109
post #101
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. HDPE lasts. So reuse it. Cardboard not so much, but where I live one can just take how many boxes one can haul off various shops and they will just thank you.

You can bring your own, non-plastic bags. I do wonder if maybe some cultures just don't have this and so the deprecation of plastic bags has left everyone quite confused. It's a very solved problem, has been for centuries probably. You can even get some with little wheels! If you absolutely can't handle the looseness of the fruits amongst your shopping, you could use string nets.

Reusable shopping bags have been a thing for a long time, but I think for many, they never went back to them after stores banned them as a Covid mitigation.

Re: Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose

#110
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> optically clear and strong, which are not properties I would have expected from cellulose You never heard of Cellophane? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane

Or movie / photographic film?

That's cellulose acetate, though (or, previously, nitrate.) Cellophane is just cellulose. It's like the difference between drinkable ethanol and ethyl-acetate nail polish remover, or between morphine and heroin. Clearly related but significantly different substances.
Post reply on HN