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

sdstate.edu

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

#181

Post by mcv »

jon_adler wrote: post #159
mcv wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I still don't understand why brown paper bags aren't more standard for everything. I do see some manufacturers reducing plastic, fortunately. For example, my box of tea bags used to come wrapped in plastic, and now it suddenly doesn't, and I'm wondering why it ever needed plastic. But there's still so much stuff that comes wrapped in plastic, and often multiple layers of it. Just ban it. There are excellent alt…

Unfortunately, all the actual tea bags are usually plastic. The wrapping is probably a small percentage of the plastic in this product.

I'm pretty sure my tea bags are paper, and have always been paper. It's the more recent "pyramid" shaped tea bags that I think are made of plastic. The most recent change to my tea bags was to remove the staple so they could go in organic waste.

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

#182

Post by pyrale »

gmac wrote: post #173
jon_adler wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, all the actual tea bags are usually plastic. The wrapping is probably a small percentage of the plastic in this product.

This is also an issue for microplastics ingestion. In the UK, teabags are increasingly made of PLA.

I solved this one with a metal tea infuser and bulk tea in a tin box

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

#183

Post by ZeroGravitas »

polalavik wrote: post #93
odie5533 wrote: post #81

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

I grapple with this all the time. my wife is very eco-conscious and will scrub out a deeply moldy glass jar just to recycle it (whether the recycling system works is a separate issue here). On one hand there is some truth to the fact that if we all just work together to do the right thing the world is a much better place to live in. Sometimes i don't want to do this (scrub gross shit out) because i'm lazy, other time…

Developing nations generally leapfrog by adopting the latest generation of developed world tech.

Imagine people saying they didn't want to adopt mobile phones because developing nations didn't have traditional telephones yet.

This applies to both green tech and to green regulations. They'll look to the EU and China for that as the US is going this one alone again. China recycles 30% of its plastic compared with 12% in the US. Presumably they look at it as an engineering problem to solve and not a fake culture war to protect the oil industry.

Slightly older data here but the trend and the major outlier of the US visible here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-plastic-waste-recyc...

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

#185

Post by privatelypublic »

hedgehog wrote: post #136
dz0707 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your math is wrong. Most of modern cars do up to 150g of CO2 per 100km, there are other emissions too, but they are in way smaller numbers.

I think the units there are off, a Camry hybrid is about 100g direct CO2 per km. One widely repeated calculation has total direct + indirect emissions for a grocery bag at 200g. So 1km driven vs 1 bag is a similar magnitude of emissions.

Please be careful of such "metrics/statistics." Their very nature means they're politically and financially incentivized lean towards a higher or lower number than "the other guy." And, of course, a big number is scarier in a vacuum. What if a paper bag is 250g of emissions?

The poster child for me for this is low-GWP refrigerants. Sounds good, right? Well, think about how CO2 captured filtered and compressed compares. I'll leave everybody to argue with their-self on this. Does co2 vs r-whatever use more energy? Less? Does it somehow justify the emissions and pollution of manufacture?

My conclusion is... I don't know.

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

#186

Post by bcraven »

2III7 wrote: post #177
sircastor wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since all our local markets have introduced handheld scanners, I don't even bring my bags in. I put everything in the cart barcode up, get to the checkout, scan everything, pay, and go. When I get to the car I unload into the bags. I'm sure it's not a thing for everyone, but I feel like I'm cutting out a fair bit of shuffling.

Why not have the bags in the cart and put the scanned products straight into the bags?

I get the impression that the 'handheld scanner' may be tethered to the till (like in B&Q) rather than one you can carry round with you (like Sainsbury's/Asda/Tesco)

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

#187

Post by lm28469 »

parineum wrote: post #105
odie5533 wrote: post #81

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.

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

Have you heard about lobbies and the billion of dollars companies spend in advertising targeting everyone from the moment their mom shits them out in the world?

Are people born wanting an iPhone 98 Max S pro and a Ford mustang gt5000 7.0 ultimate? I doubt it, but they sure are influenced by comics/movies/ads 24/7 into wanting them.

Do you think the average Joe stands a chance again zuck and his friends hiring the top behavioral scientists and paying the 1m a year to make sure their ad delivery platform are addictive as possible?

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

#188

Post by fractallyte »

weq wrote: post #135
fractallyte wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been down this road before, and been brutally downvoted, but I'll say it again: - corporations are responsible for creating products which can be recycled; - the consumer is responsible for proper disposal of their waste, and also for electing officials who have actual policies on reducing or eliminating pollution; - local government is responsible for setting up recycling centers, and for enforcing correct beha…

dudes never heard of industrial waste :D ^^^ ?

That's a whole other argument about which I have even stronger opinions - namely about the dismal failure of government, and the flaws in our democratic systems that allow corporations to infiltrate governments and manipulate policies.

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

#189

Post by jraph »

mcv wrote: post #179
alexchamberlain wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think banning plastic completely in packaging is a much harder ask, as whether it is needed is rather nuanced (if I understand it correctly). For example, it's perfectly possible to deliver cucumbers to an end customer without them being shrinkwrapped. However, to deliver enough cucumbers to enough customers for a supermarket scale, I understand from several documentaries that plastic is still required in that case…

Interesting thing is, the non-organic cucumbers at my supermarket don't come in plastic, but the organic ones do. I never know which ones to get.

Yeah, this is terrible.

Obviously the people who want to buy organic and the people who want to avoid plastic the most are probably almost the same group. They know this. It feels like "Fuck you environmental-aware buyers" to me.

Of course wrapping everything non-organic is a no go as well, it would be terrible for the environment. And I'm afraid stopping the production of non-organic stuff ain't happening anytime soon.

I believe the real solution if possible until they fix this is to go to a market or an organic store where nothing is in plastic, at least for fruits and vegetables.

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

#190

Post by Perz1val »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #154
sitharus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you, but the loose produce in store isn't clean. That's why you must wash produce before you eat it.

Any washing you do to the produce at home has basically zero chance of killing/removing anything. It's hygiene theatre. People typically don't wash their produce in bleach or soap.

Well, I use dishsoap
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