[HN Gopher] Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Pac...
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Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?
Author : ohjeez
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-11-26 17:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (modernfarmer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (modernfarmer.com)
| flybrand wrote:
| Sure, it 'could' - anything is possible!
|
| > Of all the ideas presented, creating a fibrous film that is
| edible, no-waste, anti-microbial and water soluble was the one
| that took off, and Zhao published her first paper on the subject
| 15 years ago. Since then, she's continued to tweak and refine the
| formulation.
|
| This industry is driven by ROI and waste reduction. If this
| worked, it would've worked long ago.
| macintux wrote:
| Of the many things capitalism excels at, pricing in
| externalities is not one of them.
|
| Find a more ecological alternative and then tax the hell out of
| the current methods.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| I'm just going to assume Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
| jmoak3 wrote:
| Meta comment, but for any article saying: "Could ...... ?"
|
| 95% of the time, the answer is no
| nkozyra wrote:
| Fully encapsulated by Betteridge's law.
| vore wrote:
| This is such a Hacker News meme comment that never adds
| anything of value every time it gets posted.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Where is the meme? -\\_(tsu)_/-
| pepperidgeFarm wrote:
| Fully encapsulated by Pepperidge's Farm.
| lxe wrote:
| This is nice, but we should avoid strictly focusing on the
| environmentally-specific properties of the product, but rather on
| whether the manufacturing process is scalable and cheap enough,
| and whether the product's other properties, like strength and
| food safety are worth the trade-off. Especially when starting the
| article with "But first, the industry needs to get on board."
|
| It's like that solar road idea: 1000x more expensive, 100x more
| complex, and requires constant maintenance.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| From the article: "But as folks are still interested in
| takeout, some experts think there's a timely opportunity to
| update food storage options. Zhao says that's why industry and
| researchers should work closely together.
|
| "There's not a perfect product yet. How can we reduce the cost?
| How can the formulations and technology more easily scale up
| through companies?" says Zhao."
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I wanted to see if Willie Wonka already had a patent on it, and
| found this headline [1]. Now we need to worry whether it will be
| made by slave Oompa Loompa labour.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
| business/2014/oct/21...
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| No time soon... Plastics are mostly a by product of petroleum
| refining so it's hard to beat the economic factors. And the
| manufacturing machines have been in use for so long that they are
| completely paid for so adding one more plastic whatever is
| relatively cheap compared to any new gizmo.
|
| At this point the only way to stop plastic products is to
| subsidize a replacement to the point of making it cheaper than
| plastic or to make it illegal. Both of which are unlikely to
| happen now.
|
| When looking at plastic replacements, we need to look at the
| economics as well as the replacement.
| seer wrote:
| Well yeah they are "cheap" to produce but expensive to clean up
| and dispose of. As long as governments "subsidize" plastics by
| cleaning after them themselves rather than forcing
| manufacturers to pay for it, you will have straws and plastic
| trash on the streets/parks/rivers/oceans.
|
| The funny thing is that we are _already_ paying for it with all
| the trash handling infrastructure - mostly government payed and
| supported by taxes around the world.
|
| The money is there - imagine paying less for trash, but a bit
| more for the product - still the same amount of money spent.
| But now the manufacturer has the incentive to use those new
| films and _not_ pay for its disposal. As economies of scale
| kick in, we can have clean environment and pay less for it all
| (less trash infra).
|
| I just hope people (governments) realize this in my lifetime...
| rishflab wrote:
| Why don't we just burn plastic for energy. We burn hydrocarbons
| for energy anyway, why not substitute some coal for plastic
| waste.
|
| Not an expert on this matter but I am pretty sure most
| hydrocarbons can be burnt pretty cleanly in the right conditions.
| tireonfire wrote:
| That's what Japan does. I was just over there, you have to sort
| all your trash. Burnable or not burnable.
| chairhairair wrote:
| The cost of sorting has to then be factored in (because
| plastics are often not perfect hydrocarbons, they contain a
| variety of elements depending on bulk composition and
| additives). And, even perfectly sorted plastics will not burn
| as cleanly as freshly refined hydrocarbons, so you need to
| factor that cost in as well.
|
| And for what benefit? Plastics in a land fill are a form of
| carbon sequestration if the alternative is burning them or
| fresh hydrocarbons.
|
| IMO the value in replacing plastic use has very little to do
| with energy/CO2. It's more related to other
| health/environmental effects (microplastics, etc).
| andrewstuart wrote:
| The solution to the plastic crisis to stop making the plastic.
|
| Right now, we are in a kitchen and all the drains are blocked and
| the plastic taps are on full blast and we are doing our best to
| stop it by mopping.
| jtbayly wrote:
| If you want people to stop making plastic, you need to come up
| with another material that will work for the various things
| plastic is used for. Hence this article.
| dhosek wrote:
| It's worth noting also that it's not really the consumer
| plastic waste that's the big problem. The Atlantic garbage
| barge in the 1970s made people panicked about a lack of
| landfill capacity, but the truth of the barge was more a
| political dispute more than anything else and we have the
| ability to keep handling solid waste for ages (composting is
| still important in that it will reduce methane emissions from
| landfills, but it's not important in terms of reducing
| landfill use).
|
| The bigger issue is that small pieces of plastic from the
| manufacturing process end up as environmental waste. I did
| some volunteer cleanup a dozen years ago near Ballona Creek
| and the amount of tiny pieces (bean-sized and smaller) of
| plastic and styrofoam along the creek was just mind-blowing.
| If you find yourself near any plastic manufacturing facility,
| you'll see lots of tiny bits of plastic all over the place.
| Sawdust and metal shavings get dispersed similarly, but they
| tend to have less of an environmental impact.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Disagree.
|
| Firstly, lets clarify. I don't mean "stop making plastic
| entirely", that would be impractical and silly.
|
| What we have not done as a society is make any effort at all
| to place a limit on how much plastic is created.
|
| We likely have no mechanisms at all for knowing who makes
| plastics, the quantity they make, the purpose they are made
| for and who buys them.
|
| Step one is to somehow get limits in place on the amount the
| is created.
|
| Right now, plastic production is an absolute free for all.
| You could set up "The Infinity Plastic" company tomorrow and
| spew out so much plastic that it would completely cover the
| entire earth and that would break no law at all, no one would
| know or notice.
|
| It stupid that as a society we are so obsessed with dealing
| with the output without any effort to control the input.
| dools wrote:
| Corn starch is already a really good alternative, we use it
| in our house for bin liners, I wonder why it's not more
| popular as food packaging. Perhaps it has issues with
| durability over the time periods for which shelf storage is
| required.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Corn starch sounds good put growing corn is energy
| intensive. Right now, it takes a great deal of carbon based
| fuels to grow it. Plus every ear of corn that's grown for a
| plastic replacement is one less that's grow for food. It's
| an expensive trade off. Re-use and no-use of plastic is
| probably the best way to deal with plastic trash.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Pardon the ignorance but aside from cost, what is wrong with
| using glass? Why not just make a ton of glass from cheap sand and
| scale/automate it to make it cheaper?
| zdragnar wrote:
| To make glass resistant to shattering from jostling in
| shipping, it needs to be thicker than the equivalent sturdiness
| from plastic. That means excess weight and volume, making
| transportation more energy-intensive.
|
| Plastic is also easier to mold into a variety of shapes, so you
| get conveniently stackable containers and lids without much
| extra cost (the same shapes introduce stress points in the
| glass where fractures could occur).
|
| Plastic can also be made flexible, i.e. as shrinkwrap (which
| this product would replace in some cases). You aren't going to
| wrap vulnerable fruit and veg (like english cucumbers) in glass
| wrap.
|
| Glass can be easier to recycle, but again you're fighting
| volume and mass in transportation as well as waste management.
| It's great for things like liquids if you have businesses
| willing to re-use them, but they also have to expend the extra
| energy to properly clean and sanitize them before they can be
| reused.
|
| The last time I bought a soda from a company that would take
| back glass bottles and reuse them, the flavor could only be
| described as "soap". I never again wondered why every other
| company sold disposable aluminum and plastic after that.
| 14 wrote:
| Glass is heavy and would increase the carbon footprint of some
| items.
| vxNsr wrote:
| It's actually a big problem, we're running low on sand that's
| good for making glass, you need sea sand for glass, desert sand
| is no good, it's the wrong shape. Nefarious actors are actually
| stealing beach sand in the dead of night. It's a problem.
| morepork wrote:
| Glass is incredible carbon intensive to make, and takes
| practically forever to break down. It's also fragile.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Doesn't matter if it takes forever to break down, glass is
| inert and nontoxic
| oyashirochama wrote:
| Glass literally becomes sand after not too long in the
| environment. It's energy intensive but so is aluminum
| processing from bauxite and several levels above it. Both are
| really good at reusability though, also on that front
| aluminum does just as good at not breaking down.
| macintux wrote:
| And I don't know the economics for making it not so, but it's
| quite dangerous when it breaks. Not something I want around
| food (barring glassware that's not particularly fragile).
| notacop31337 wrote:
| A generally applicable rule of thumb to apply is as soon as you
| need to generate heat, you're spending a lot of energy on the
| process, which is far more damaging and requiring of an
| overhaul than packaging.
| csande17 wrote:
| Plastic packaging protects food from moisture and dirt. If you
| make the packaging out of a water-soluble material and then eat
| it, surely that's almost completely useless? Like, now you need
| some kind of additional outer wrapper to stop your edible
| packaging from getting contaminated.
|
| The article mentions muffin liners as an alternative use case,
| but those are usually made of thin paper and are already
| compostable.
| irjustin wrote:
| water-soluable packaging would be impossible in high humidity
| environments.
| jimmiebtlr wrote:
| Edible packaging would also be biodegradable and a big plus,
| agreed that trying to eat it would pretty much defeat the
| purpose.
|
| Could make some interesting food items with an edible film
| though.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Edible doesn't make sense, because then we need a removeable
| layer around it to protect the edible part.
| csande17 wrote:
| I think the parent comment is suggesting using it as a food
| ingredient, not as packaging. Like dumplings, or like how
| people make fancy desserts with edible gold leaf.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| The article describes how this edible part is also anti-
| microbial, if it were to be consumed instead of just thrown
| in a composter.
| morepork wrote:
| I think the idea is that it becomes like fruit and vegetables.
| You purchase them unwrapped, wash them, and eat them. This
| would have implications on the supply chain of course to try
| and keep these items clean.
|
| It could also replace individually wrapped items, such as in a
| box of cereal bars the individual bars wouldn't need plastic
| wrap.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| From the article: "The cranberry film can work as a
| replacement for film plastic, protecting fruits and
| vegetables with delicate skins, such as English cucumbers."
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| My protein bars need individual wrap. I am not putting them
| 'naked' inside of my hiking backpack.
|
| Not to mention how nasty the last one is when it takes you 2
| months to finish a box... All of them exposed to air? Thanks
| but no thanks.
| seer wrote:
| But would you put an apple "naked"? A cucumber? A tomato?
|
| At least for me - when I hike I usually have a box and put
| all of those items there "raw" - the box protects them from
| mechanical forces but I don't need to individually wrap my
| apples inside that box. Having other edible things have
| such an edible covering would be amazing actually.
| King-Aaron wrote:
| Fruits and vegetables tend to have their own inbuilt
| wrapping that protects them from dirt, moisture, etc.
| Whereas an oat bar or protein bar is often quite porous
| and would get impregnated with dirt and stuff very
| quickly. It's an absurd comparison to make.
| Renaud wrote:
| That's what tin boxes are for. They keep their content
| fresh and protect it.
| morepork wrote:
| The bars wouldn't be exposed to air, that's what edible
| wraps like what is described in the article are for.
|
| For backpacks and the like you will need something else to
| keep it clean, same as you would for an apple. May I
| present to you the lunch box, already used by 100s of
| millions.
| gen220 wrote:
| FWIW, if you're curious about the insights from somebody
| who's crusty enough to make their own protein bars :)
|
| If you care about avoiding "processed foods" in other
| domains and are consuming shrink-wrapped bars with a shelf
| life of 2+ months: here be dragons!
|
| I store ours in a glass container the refrigerator, where
| they're individually wrapped in butcher paper. I'd consider
| them good outside of the fridge (in the paper) for 32
| hours, inside the fridge for a week or two. Making a batch
| takes about 10 minutes + overnight refrigeration, and the
| recipe is trivial to scale-up/down in size.
|
| They're certainly not as convenient or robust as shrink-
| wrapped lara bars, but we're not frequently in situations
| where the diff disappoints, ymmv.
| amluto wrote:
| Muffin liners actually make more sense to me. It's often hard
| to get a muffin liner off of the muffin without losing a lot of
| muffin. An edible liner that has a good texture might have some
| actual value.
| sockaddr wrote:
| Or you could just sit and try to scrape the residual muffin
| off with your teeth getting little crumbs all over you and
| sticky crap all over your fingers like a normal person. Don't
| try to play god with your edible wrapper technology. This is
| the way it's meant to be.
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