51–60 of 351 posts
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Agree, but I don't see any mention of that in the article, so I don't have enough information to argue for that. I'm sure we can agree though that having 17-day decomposing plastics that don't contaminate with heat and water is a good thing, so I hope it is that.
I’m pretty sure 17 days is far too short for most serious uses.
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The argument, which doesn't seem insane, is that this film is useful because it is particularly optically clear and strong, which are not properties I would have expected from cellulose. I agree 17 days is too short, but that seems like an interesting opportunity for future research. I would highlight that the number is 17 days when buried in wet soil , not sitting around on a shelf. Cardboard will break down when bu…
> 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
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I don't know much about this area at all, but it seems like it would be neat to have a plastic that stood up well to heat and moisture, but you could leave it soaking in some petrol/diesel/oil liquid, and it would melt into that and leave you with something still useable. As I write this, it sounds like I'm just describing something like petrol in a solid form at room temperature. Perhaps there's something a little l…
> it sounds like I'm just describing something like petrol in a solid form at room temperature That's what plastic IS. That's why it sounds like it, because plastic is in fact solid hydrocarbon. So not only is it not farfetched, it exists today, which is also why incinerating plastic for energy is the best possible way to dispose it. You remove the plastic from the world, you reduce the amount of oil pumped for fuel,…
Yeah that’s the problem. Plastic solves a logistics problem, not a structural problem. Are your Twinkies stuck in a hot truck in Texas for a week? No problem!
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.
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Is your shipment of drink containers stuck in a hot truck in Texas for a month? No problem! They’re plastic
My point is it doesn't have to be a complete solution to replacing plastic to be able to have some benefits to replacing some plastics. You can have local manufacturing processes so that it doesn't have to get stuck in a truck in Texas for a month. And there'll still be uses for the long lived plastics. You don't have to use one plastic for everything - like we don't today. Building a box that can last for centuries…
Unless you want to eat at Applebees, a small, locally sourced, organic, etc restaurant owner can’t conjure up a supply of biodegradable containers. But your local joint can order 5000 of them and keep them in a back room in less than ideal conditions for a year at minimal costs.
Not saying it’s right, just trying to draw attention to reality
Great, just what we needed as companies are pushing even more aggressively for planned obsolescence. "Biodegradable" just means "self-destructs automatically so we can keep selling you more".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know much about this area at all, but it seems like it would be neat to have a plastic that stood up well to heat and moisture, but you could leave it soaking in some petrol/diesel/oil liquid, and it would melt into that and leave you with something still useable. As I write this, it sounds like I'm just describing something like petrol in a solid form at room temperature. Perhaps there's something a little l…
> it sounds like I'm just describing something like petrol in a solid form at room temperature That's what plastic IS. That's why it sounds like it, because plastic is in fact solid hydrocarbon. So not only is it not farfetched, it exists today, which is also why incinerating plastic for energy is the best possible way to dispose it. You remove the plastic from the world, you reduce the amount of oil pumped for fuel,…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene
and even
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene
are "solid hydrocarbons" but most plastics are more complex than that. One reason we quit burning trash in many places is the presence of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride
which produces HCl which eats the incinerator. [1] Sure you can build a chemically tougher incinerator and add lime but practically stripping toxins from incinerators is a function of building a stripper tuned to whatever toxins are expected to be in the particular waste and frequently adding something that reacts with them. You can't really "burn up" heavy metals and certain other poisons and those either go up the stack or are part of the ash that has to be disposed of.
A technology you hear about more than you hear about real implementations is "chemical recycling of plastics" through pyrolysis which implement more or less controlled combustion and captures petrochemical molecules that can be used either for fuel or to make plastics and other chemicals: these manage to capture or consume most of the products but some of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are produced when you burn plastic are practically drugs that cause cancer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzo(a)pyrene
[1] Plenty of others contain oxygen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate or nitrogen such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styren... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon