[HN Gopher] New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled ...
___________________________________________________________________
New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-
perfect efficiency
Author : ColinWright
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-02-20 18:30 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (academictimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (academictimes.com)
| giantg2 wrote:
| There's also a company working on a plastic replacement for
| mushroom grow bags. It would be biodegradable.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Plastic recycling seems heavily motivated by emotion and virtue
| signaling.
|
| In reality, only about 5% of our crude oil use goes towards
| plastic.
|
| If we rolled out EVs, and then just burned all the plastic trash
| (using waste-to-energy plants), we would still be far ahead.
|
| The biggest challenges with plastics are hormone disruption, and
| microplastics (particularly in the 3rd world without sufficient
| landfill or W2E infrastructure or societal environmental
| concern). If these new plastics are less molecularly stable,
| these issues may actually be worsened.
| legulere wrote:
| Plastic consumption is still growing exponentially though while
| burning oil is declining.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Plastic disposal is a clear example of the failure of current
| economics.
|
| It's clearly bad for the environment and has long term costs,
| but there basically isn't any way economics to calculate that
| or incent it to not be done.
|
| So IMO, recycling is an exploratory exercise in seeing if we
| can socially engineer behavior that is "better". The cynic
| would say "it doesn't", but I could argue civilization is built
| on short term economic calculations and resulting
| social/behavioral engineering that makes that impossible.
|
| If there was any way to know, I'd be fascinated to see if there
| are real measurements in the drop in altruism, either from the
| psychological conditioning of our society, or making altruistic
| people less able to procreate.
| orev wrote:
| There definitely is a way to deal with this in economics:
| taxes. If you tax the companies making the plastics, the
| price will go up, and they have an incentive to do things
| differently.
|
| Taxes are a crucial pillar of even a purely capitalist
| society, it's just that they are not easy to implement
| politically.
| alistairSH wrote:
| LOL @ the downvotes. Not sure why, what orev said is true -
| taxing externalities is generally considered (at least by
| economists) the best way to manage the externality. Set the
| tax at a level that makes it cost prohibitive to use
| plastics and the market will find an alternative.
| hntrader wrote:
| Pigovian taxes are my favourite response to environmental
| damage.
|
| In theory, everyone should be on board. The fiscal
| conservatives _should_ want it, since negative
| externalities are a violation of the non-aggression
| principle, and taxes are the least intrusive way to
| encourage change, it 's basically delegating the specifics
| of the change to the market. It is consistent with their
| principles to want it. It seems like the easiest way to
| potentially get the most people on board.
|
| I also genuinely believe it's the best solution most of the
| time. The market is ingenious as long as prices accurately
| reflect costs and benefits.
| specialist wrote:
| I read u/AtlasBarfed's point being that we don't have a
| proper way to put a price on the externalities.
|
| To your point, onerously high taxes could largely remove
| plastics from the waste stream, mooting the need to
| determine the cost.
|
| I'd like to go even further. Incentives and prizes and
| grants and whatever-it-takes to find alternatives. eg Bulk
| pills in plant-based baggies, instead of monthly oversized
| labeled bottles and caps.
|
| Nudge the culture and expectations. Every little bit would
| help. Because better is better.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| 90% of ocean plastic comes from Asia and Africa:
|
| http://odinafrica.org/about-us/news/217-90-percent-of-
| ocean-....
|
| We need to prohibit Western companies from packaging food and
| FMCG for the developing world in plastic - until both the
| disposal infrastructure and societal attitudes around
| pollution and environmental management change. Or, charge
| those polluters to build that infrastructure or change those
| attitudes.
|
| Here are the biggest polluters:
|
| CocaCola (USA)
|
| PepsiCo (USA)
|
| Nestle (Switzerland)
|
| Unilever (UK)
|
| Mondelez (USA)
|
| Mars (USA)
|
| P&G (USA)
|
| Phillip Morris (USA)
|
| Colgate-Palmolive (USA)
|
| Perfetti van Melle (Italy)
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coca-cola-pepsico-and-
| nest....
|
| I would suggest that a targeted protest and political
| lobbying campaign against the headquarters of those companies
| would be more effective than any individual effort to clean
| up plastic pollution.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That's only because we were sending plastics to them to
| 'reprocess', and when those countries banned it, we were
| dumping it there illegally:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/malaysia-to-
| se...
| maxerickson wrote:
| My recycling is sorted on site at the county dump, with
| rejected stuff disposed of in the dump. No way are the
| bundles of material they sell being shipped to Asia for
| disposal, it doesn't make any sense at all.
|
| That article is about the countries raising their
| standards for the sorted material they accept, not about
| the typical journey that Australian waste takes. Just
| think about what a non existent amount of material 100
| tonnes is for a country of 25 million people. Millions of
| tons of waste a year just in NSW:
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/what-sydney-is-
| really-th...
| radicalbyte wrote:
| A lot of that plastic is shipped in from USA/EU.
| lofi_lory wrote:
| I think the best use would be not microparticle-shedding
| plastics made from fast growing plants, deposited in the
| ground as carbon sinks. Something degradable, but not in
| anaerobic conditions.
| rahimiali wrote:
| disposing of plastics isn't so simple. burning plastic for
| energy is ok for some plastics, but plastics that contain
| chlorides produce dangerous gases. we don't have cost effective
| ways to capture those gases. even if we addressed that issue,
| the economics of w2e are poorer than those of landfills.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Citation? I was told proper incineration can take care of
| that l.
| Aunche wrote:
| I wish there were more charities focused on building proper
| waste management infrastructure in developing countries. People
| don't want to support landfills and incineration, so they would
| rather support "clever" methods of collecting plastic in the
| ocean instead, which often end up in landfills anyways.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I think we should recycle plastic if we can, or better yet,
| switch to other materials that are easier to recycle. For
| example, glass bottles can just be sent back to the factory,
| washed and reused. This is already done for beer and wine
| AFAIK. It could be done for milk and every other kind of drinks
| as well.
|
| However, if we fail to recycle plastic, isn't burying plastic
| in a landfill, in a way, a form of carbon capture? This is
| that. much less carbon going into the atmosphere. Again, I
| think we should avoid that if we can, but IMO, not all
| pollution is an equally serious problem. Reducing CO2 emissions
| is clearly the number one priority.
| dawnerd wrote:
| If by sent back you mean crushed then yeah sure bottles are
| reused. Oregon for example breaks the bottles when you return
| them to prevent fraud.
| thret wrote:
| My mother used to say this happened with milk. They'd deliver
| it daily and collect the used bottles to be washed and
| reused.
| alistairSH wrote:
| AFAIK, you can still get daily milk delivery in rural
| Scotland. My grandparents certainly did through the
| mid-90s. Some homes even had a little door where the
| milkman could place the bottles straight into the kitchen.
| yojo wrote:
| This is still done today with some premium milk in the US -
| e.g. Strauss milk:
| https://www.strausfamilycreamery.com/simple-faqs/what-
| should...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| > The biggest challenges with plastics are hormone disruption,
| and microplastics (particularly in the 3rd world without
| sufficient landfill or W2E infrastructure or societal
| environmental concern).
|
| Do we live on the same planet?
|
| The biggest challenges with plastics is the proliferation of
| plastic pollution.
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Do you have any source for the 5% stat? I don't mistrust you,
| but it would be nice to "see it with my own eyes" to be
| confident enough to use it in conversations with others.
| lionsdan wrote:
| "Plastics production accounts for about 4 percent of global
| oil production. That's according to figures for 2012, so now
| it may well be higher."
|
| https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Much-Crude-
| Oi...
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| https://www.bpf.co.uk/press/Oil_Consumption
|
| "In Europe, it is estimated that between 4-6% of oil and gas
| is used for producing plastics."
|
| - British Plastics Federation
|
| It varies from country to country, and in the USA natural gas
| is the primary input instead of oil. Some gas or oil could be
| consumed by the plant, not actually ending up in the final
| product.
| rmason wrote:
| I remember a time when everything was paper bags. Groceries and
| retailers went with plastic because it was cheaper. But with
| plastic there was a hidden cost.
|
| Now we're told we must pay a premium for recyclable plastic.
| Personally I'd rather pay a premium for paper because it's made
| from a renewable resource. Plus paper will decompose within two
| months in nature.
|
| The only drawback I can find is that paper bags take more water
| to produce than plastic. Sitting in a Great Lakes state that
| problem doesn't bother me.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Also not everything can be paper. A coffee cup can never be
| fully paper, it needs a plastic lining and can thus never be
| recyclable. Not without it being extremely crappy. No food
| item can be enclosed in a fully paper enclosure and expected
| to have a shelf life.
|
| And for all the Portlanders saving a plastic bag there's a
| Texan buying all their drinking water as pallets of
| disposable single use plastic bottles.
|
| I think we should just take the japan route - use plastic,
| try your best to be judicious and then just incinerate it.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Paper bags also turn to mush and spill your groceries when
| wet.
| rmason wrote:
| Apparently you've never had a plastic bag break dumping
| your groceries on the ground. Try chasing rolling bottles
| of pop going under cars when it's below zero out. Never had
| that happen with a paper bag.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I've had both break. Plastic bags tear when overloaded or
| structurally unsound. Previously sound paper bags
| _become_ structurally unsound when soaked, and it doesn
| 't take much wet to soak them. (And unhelpfully, the
| things that could make a paper bag waterproof also make
| it non biodegradable).
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Only about 5%
|
| Perhaps. But 5% of gazillions is still bazillions. Bazillions
| of non-biodegradable goods - many single use - adds up.
| Forever.
|
| Presuming oil follows the same path as coal (i.e., demand
| collapses and price follows) then plastics will get even
| cheaper. If we don't find an alternative soon, it might never
| happen.
| jariel wrote:
| ? Oil being used to make plastics was never a problem.
|
| Oil is not evil. It's the Co2 bit that's a problem.
|
| The problem you missed was at least to some extent recycling:
| we can't reuse the material at all, and while theoretically
| burning is practical, we still don't separate everything and
| burning still leaves a byproduct that has to be buried.
|
| I suggest the alternative is going to have to be something that
| truly disintegrates, i.e. more organic.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Oil on its own is still not great, because of the extraction
| methods that cause environmental harm, but it's definitely
| better than the CO2-related issues from burning it.
| 8note wrote:
| Burying it as is makes it a carbon sink.
|
| If we take plant, turn them to plastic that doesn't regards
| quickly, then bury them, we're sequestering that co2
| jariel wrote:
| Oil for plastic use just is not a CO2 issue, it has nothing
| to do with sequestration.
|
| Oil for plastics is more akin to the use of any other
| natural resource in a product or good.
|
| The above commenter indicated 'issues with extraction',
| well yes, but we have the same issues with extracting
| everything else. Also, frankly, most oil extraction is not
| very damaging directly - if we were only using oil for
| plastics, we'd probably only use the easiest to access oil,
| like from the Middle East where we pop a straw in the
| ground and that's it aside from refining.
|
| Burned 'anything' that we put in landfills is actually
| better than raw garbage as it's considerably reduced and
| more dense - but it's still landfill.
|
| We should strive for a solution that doesn't require
| landfill.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I believe plastic recycling is not motivated by oil use
| primarily. I believe it is motivated by trash accumulation in
| oceans and the food chain (microplastics). There are a ton of
| areas of the world where plastic just piles up.
| cortesoft wrote:
| How would recycling help that? Throwing your trash in a trash
| can and taking it to a landfill would protect the ocean and
| food chain just as much as recycling it would.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Off-topic, but sometimes I feel like we could harvest the
| plastic from the ocean, make plastic bricks, and build
| millions of houses.
|
| _Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to say that this is
| a viable solution to anything, or that it's a good use of
| resources based on our current methodologies. I'm more just
| trying to say that there's so much raw material out there and
| that it's better if it comes out of the ocean. Like, if
| suddenly we found a non-polluting method to perfectly
| separate out all the components, then a health-safe chemical
| mixture with those components that was solid and fireproof
| (and UV proof), there's probably enough out there to do
| something significant with._
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Bricks made of plastic weather into dust made of
| microplastic.
|
| If microplastic turns out to be as serious a problem as has
| been suggested, with bioaccumulation and various sorts of
| damage, then the only solution is that _all plastic without
| exception has to be thoroughly destroyed_ chemically or by
| burning as soon as it it isn 't in use. And not put into
| use in ways that emit microplastic (as fibers, dust, or
| otherwise).
| pkaye wrote:
| You also need to make it fireproof or use an outer layer of
| fireproof material.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Yeah, if you aren't careful plastic building materials
| have some grim failure modes, the cladding that burned
| Grenfell Tower was made of aluminum and polyethylene,
| which more or less acted like a candle.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I've edited my comment to clarify the subtext, but yes
| you'd _definitely_ need to make it fireproof. Fiery
| liquid plastic is exceptionally unpleasant.
| bluGill wrote:
| Your edit is where the problem is. Sure there is a lot of
| plastic in the ocean, but the ocean is big as well. As a
| whole the size of the ocean cancels out your attempts to do
| any recovery. You end up using more energy to power the
| filters (which are typically on ships) than you would by
| taking the oil powering the filters and directly turning it
| into plastic.
|
| Plastic in the ocean isn't an easy problem to solve with
| anything other than wait for it to degrade. Which isn't as
| bad as it sounds because plastic doesn't do well in the
| sun, and we can easily make plastics that do worse and thus
| degrade faster.
| Covzire wrote:
| There have been attempts at harvesting plastic from the
| ocean. I remember one fairly recently that built a system
| using crowd funding but I don't think it was as successful
| as hoped. If they keep trying I have little doubt they'll
| make it work and possibly even turn a profit.
|
| https://www.sciencealert.com/that-ocean-garbage-collector-
| is...
| beckman466 wrote:
| Or... we could not use so much plastic, and make _actual_
| bricks to build 'millions of houses'.
|
| Since you sound so excited, are you going to live in the
| first plastic house with your family?
|
| I think suggestions like this are super demeaning. I often
| see them coming from privileged knowledge workers, who are
| eager to share 'free ideas'/psuedo-solutions as a sort of
| 'charity' for poor people (and people in the global south).
| They are also often strategies which somehow don't seem to
| fit for their own life - and instead are for 'others' who
| are less well off.
|
| In other words: tech solutionism.
|
| As knowledge workers, let's try to cut through our false
| consciousness and come up with some awesome systemic
| changes that kick butt.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Demeaning or proposing 'charity' was not my intent at
| all.
|
| I've edited my comment to clarify the subtext, but to
| answer your question: if we could find a health-safe fire
| and UV-resistant plastic formula that made solid building
| materials out of the pollution in the ocean, I would
| definitely live in the first plastic house with my
| family. It could survive hundreds of years and have a lot
| of benefits.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| You certainly could, but you could also build houses out of
| stone and cement, like they used to do in the old days.
| Makes for very durable construction.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Better to harvest the plastic from the ocean, and power the
| collection system with the plastic in a plasma gasifier.
| The slag can be disposed of in the ocean, as its chemically
| inert.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > [...] build millions of houses
|
| ... slowly leaching endocrine disruptors in the environment
| for generations to come.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| On the other hand, that might further cut reproduction
| rates. This is essential to stop climate change,
| unpleasant as it may seem.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| There are more species than humans who need to reproduce.
| BariumBlue wrote:
| There is a Kenyan Entrepreneur that is trying making bricks
| from excess and non-recyclable plastic:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-environment-
| recycli...
| labawi wrote:
| Most of the plastic can not be practically recovered from
| the ocean. It's more of a publicity stunt and cleaning
| hotspots.
|
| We need to catch the plastics before they go into the
| environment, disintegrate, release their plasticizers and
| other toxins.
|
| As has been said, best way to deal with all the plastic
| garbage that contains who-knows-what would probably be
| fuel, feedstock in refineries or similar.
| Animats wrote:
| "The one disadvantage of the new materials Mecking identified was
| their cost."
|
| Oops.
|
| Biodegradable plastics are available. They're useful for things
| likely to be discarded with ordinary trash, like food packaging.
| Some are made from starches.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Isn't plastic in landfills actually a great way to sequester
| carbon?
| orev wrote:
| It's not really a benefit if the original carbon came from oil,
| because the carbon that was originally deep underground is now
| at the surface. If anything it's only neutral, however the
| carbon emitted during oil extraction and the manufacturing
| process still results in a net negative.
|
| Landfill isn't the worst option, but it's still better to try
| to avoid the manufacturing of it to begin with.
| TeamXe wrote:
| REDUCE, Reuse, Recycle. People forget (or never realized) the
| order was intentional.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Although you are right, I don't think it is that people
| don't know this. Recycle is easy, through it in the blue
| bucket. Reduce requires a complete re-imaging of our
| society. This won't happen without substantial taxation on
| plastics and single use packaging. But that is a bad way to
| get re-elected and how will we get next day shippping?
| jrowen wrote:
| To go a bit further, I feel like "reduce" just isn't
| really in the vocabulary of living organisms. Once any
| particular cat is out of its bag, it's not going back in
| (though I'd love to hear some examples to the contrary).
| It seems like our best bet really is an ever more Rube
| Goldberg-ian stack of attempted fixes for the problems we
| create.
| benjohnson1707 wrote:
| As always, scale matters. Plastic will be superior to all the
| alternatives as long as it's a cheap waste by-product of oil
| refinement.
|
| Make alternatives economically competitive to basically free oil
| refinement by-products, and we're talking.
|
| EVs might help here, it seems.
| dheera wrote:
| "Mobile phone case made with 3D printing, using recycled
| plastic."
|
| I do a lot of 3D printing and I always feel bad every time I have
| a bad print or design error and need to throw it in the trash. I
| really hope we can see some of these filaments on the market soon
| especially considering how popular 3D printing is becoming.
| loosetypes wrote:
| Agreed. If you print a dinosaur skull out of ABS, I wonder if
| the cast would survive longer than a real fossil.
| thret wrote:
| That is a sombre thought.
| swiley wrote:
| PLA can be recycled with near perfect efficiency and is
| available today.
|
| Also it's extremely biodegradable so throwing it out isn't the
| end of the world.
| tomcam wrote:
| TIL. Can you tell me more about the recycling process for
| PLA?
| mnouquet wrote:
| Shred, heat and extrude.
| tomcam wrote:
| Thank you very much. Not sure why my question was
| downvoted.
| dheera wrote:
| PLA is pretty useless as a material though for anything but
| art. Almost everything I print has a functional purpose and
| either (a) needs mechanical strength (b) will be placed
| outdoors in the California sun or (c) will be used to house
| electronics that may reach temperatures as high as 70-80 C.
|
| PLA is basically useless to me and pretty much all
| roboticists. I use PETG for almost everything because it
| works perfectly for all my needs; unfortunately I often need
| to go through about 2-3 versions of many parts I make and
| wish there were a better, more efficiently recyclable option
| that has the same or better properties as PETG.
| swiley wrote:
| If the part doesn't have to last long or is subjected to
| smaller forces and the robot is kept in a controlled place
| PLA is fine. We used them it to make parts for robotics
| competitions in college.
| dheera wrote:
| It really depends on what you're building. For controlled
| environments that's fine, but unfortunately I'm not
| building for controlled environments, and tend to do
| quite extreme things with parts. I need them to be
| subjectable to force and reasonable amounts of heat.
| There is no way around it in my applications.
|
| Point is PETG works, sometimes I need to go to CF-Nylon,
| I'm just looking for something that's as good
| mechanically and can be recyclable. I wonder if the
| plastics in the article would work.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > It really depends on what you're building. For
| controlled environments that's fine, but unfortunately
| I'm not building for controlled environments, ...
|
| Sample size fallacy right here. Just because it's useless
| to you doesn't mean it's useless. Plenty are doing fine
| with PLA.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I've just been living with the downsides of pla. Should I
| just switch to petg?
|
| I have my printer in my bedroom though. Is petg toxi to
| breathe?
| daslicious wrote:
| yikes, i thought 3d printers were high emitters of tiny
| plastic particles that are harmful to breath. Hope it's
| well ventilated
| gary_0 wrote:
| Not sure how toxic PETG is but the fumes are quite
| unpleasant. When I was around where large amounts of PETG
| were being worked with, ventilation was a must.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| No, it's not. Despite what store pages love to tell you at
| every corner, PLA does not degrade by itself. It requires
| exposure to 60+ degrees Celsius for at least 6 months. Good
| luck building recycling plants handling this in an
| environmentally-friendly and economical way.
|
| Don't throw out PLA, it's barely less problematic than other
| materials.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Temperature at land fills get rather high. Not sure about 6
| months, it depends where.
| swiley wrote:
| They say "new ... plastic" but the paper looks like it's talking
| about Polyethylene (not too sure what "polyethylene-like" means,
| different degrees of polymerization?)
| profvyas wrote:
| The real problem with plastics is that they are really cheap.
| ratsmack wrote:
| >plant-based
|
| What they're _based_ from isn 't the problem, it's chemicals
| added to the base, such as chlorine compounds, that is the
| problem.
| specialist wrote:
| Please say more. My efforts to buy least processed cotton and
| wood pulp products have been largely unsuccessful. I don't need
| my toilet paper or t-shirts to be white.
| williesleg wrote:
| Wait, plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and
| produce oxygen. Why kill more plants?
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