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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

#211

Post by jajko »

GuestFAUniverse wrote: post #161
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…

Brown paper, from recycled fibers are often contaminated with mineral oil residue (e.g. from ink on paper) and other unhealthy chemicals, sadly. There was a report in Germany, years ago, of a range of organic products that failed during testing. They discovered the packaging (recycled paper) was the issue, not the crops and the supply chain before packaging. So, a _really_ biodegradable cellulose bag is desirable. Ev…

Road to hell is paved with good intentions... I wonder how many here even notice the most important comment here from you and just keep repeating how plastic bags are worse.

Yes they are terrible, but we shouldn't just blindly replace them with anything and call it a day but do the (continuous) investigation for best solution, poisons are these days everywhere.

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

#213

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

datameta wrote: post #52
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #16

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

Cellophane is still used to refer to LDPE grocery bags in former soviet immigrant diaspora

Yeah I know this usage from older people when I was a kid, they referred to any clear thin wrapping as cellophane where to me it was just plastic. My father told me that cigarette packs are kind-of environmentally friendly because they are made up of nothing but paper, tobacco obviously, cellulose acetate for the filters, and cellophane for the wrapper. Recently I got interested into whether they still use cellophane instead of plastic, so I did some * * * science * * * by dunking a wrapper in water (and yes, it did soak up some water) and burning some (it burns cleanly like paper with grey ashes, unlike plastic which stinks and leaves behind hard black tar). So apart from the printing colors, it looks bio-degradable, with the other reservation being that especially the filters will spend a really long time underground before becoming integrated.

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

#214

Post by vanviegen »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #192
vanviegen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I understand it, without the wrapping a much larger percentage of cucumbers need to be thrown away before ever being sold, due to spoilage. That's not a win for the environment.

> That's not a win for the environment. How is this calculated? I know that growing a cucumber has an environmental cost but so does producing plastic, delivering it and then using machines to shrink-wrap every cucumber.

This study, for instance, [1] looks at CO2 emissions. Which may be a somewhat limited view, but the effect is rather large: adding 5 wrappers around a cucumber (4 of which being useless) would result in about the same CO2 usage as adding no wrapper. And that's not even considering spoilage after the cucumber has been bought by a consumer.

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-system...

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

#215

Post by ahoka »

privatelypublic wrote: post #122
positron26 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

30mpg, 10 miles, means two pounds of gasoline, 910grams, knock off or add 100g for ethanol per your preference, a google says about 5grams per bag, so nearly 200 bags. Nowhere close to 10k, but nontrivial. And, this gets reduced and sometimes outright negated if you reuse the bag. Doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate if plastic shopping bags are the beat choice though. I don't think replacing them with store bought dog…

Cars don't only need gasoline to exist and work.

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

#216

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

quotemstr wrote: post #3

> grapevine The headline is practically a demonic summoning ritual for the naturalistic fallacy. The article is talking about cellulose. We've had cellulose forever. Cellulose is dirt cheap. We are a post-cellulose-scarcity civilization. Extracting it from grapevines ought to be mocked as our century's version of bringing coal to Newcastle. There's a reason we don't use cellulose packaging for everything and it has n…

Another day has come around here since, I've slept over this argument, and I still find it genuinely anti-scientific and smug. As for the coals to Newcastle, did you know that there are steam engines that want to be fed particular types of coal, not any type, to run well (I think I learned that from YouTuber Cruise the Cut)? So there's a point to made that sometimes bringing coals to Newcastle is exactly what you want. Other than that we need much more research in all kinds of cyclic processes that we can utilize to make our activities more sustainable. Right now much too much material is on a one-way trip to the landfill or the incinerator, and how to continue mining and farming is solely left as an exercise to the future reader, with no hind- or foresight, at all. Traditionally people used all kinds of wrappings and containers, many of them suboptimal from a modern POV which we now have replaced with all kinds of plastic which is littering the planet, land and water alike. A solution will not be simple or easy, but if cellulose from grapevine can be part of it, that's probably a good thing.

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

#217

Post by loopdoend »

jajko wrote: post #211
GuestFAUniverse wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brown paper, from recycled fibers are often contaminated with mineral oil residue (e.g. from ink on paper) and other unhealthy chemicals, sadly. There was a report in Germany, years ago, of a range of organic products that failed during testing. They discovered the packaging (recycled paper) was the issue, not the crops and the supply chain before packaging. So, a _really_ biodegradable cellulose bag is desirable. Ev…

Road to hell is paved with good intentions... I wonder how many here even notice the most important comment here from you and just keep repeating how plastic bags are worse. Yes they are terrible, but we shouldn't just blindly replace them with anything and call it a day but do the (continuous) investigation for best solution, poisons are these days everywhere.

Wouldn't the best solution be ensuring they all end up in an appropriate landfill rather than a river?

It seems people are so against landfills that they're happy to sort their plastic and sent it on an epic journey of fraud where it ends up in a river in India. Meanwhile it could have been buried with their other trash and appropriately managed.

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

#218

Post by Daisywh »

Ever since energy conservation and environmental protection became a focus, supermarkets have started charging for plastic bags. But I think relying on this kind of approach to reduce usage does not really solve the root problem. Instead of using penalties, we should be thinking of practical and eco friendly alternatives that make people genuinely want to change their habits.

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

#219

Post by CalRobert »

Daisywh wrote: post #218

Ever since energy conservation and environmental protection became a focus, supermarkets have started charging for plastic bags. But I think relying on this kind of approach to reduce usage does not really solve the root problem. Instead of using penalties, we should be thinking of practical and eco friendly alternatives that make people genuinely want to change their habits.

Penalties are a key part of the picture though. They help cover the otherwise unpriced negative externalities.

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

#220

Post by timeon »

samrus wrote: post #150
alexchamberlain wrote: post #148

The UK banned single use plastic bags at major supermarkets. We all moaned about it for a few minutes, forgot our reusable bags a couple of times and then got on with it. Even the small plastic bags you put fruit or pastries in are now gone in a few super markets - initially, they replaced them with transparent paper-based windowed bags, but then I think people realised you really don't need to see inside the bag, an…

These days, you never hear about reduce, reuse, recycle, and how its supposed to be in that priority order. When i was a kid thats what we were taught. Now its just recycle, recycle, recycle My conspiracy theory is corporate propaganda changed it because reduce and reuse decreases demand, while recycle potentially only lowers production cost

The goal of green-washing is to keep 'unlimited' growth.
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