[HN Gopher] Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic'
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Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic'
Author : wglb
Score : 212 points
Date : 2024-06-25 02:34 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| gumby wrote:
| What's the use case for plastic that degrades? I mean we humans
| know when we're done with it, but surely it's going to interact
| with environmental triggers.
|
| I understand the benefit of not having plastic in landfills and
| not making it from fossil fuels! My question is "when could I
| depend on something using this plastic?"
| Gigachad wrote:
| There are plenty of plastic products that are only used for a
| moment and then chucked. Plastic wrap for wrapping pallets, or
| disposable cups, etc. A lot of the paper alternatives we use
| still have plastic liners to make them waterproof.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| Single-use scenarios would be my first thought, especially food
| containers and utensils from food vendors.
|
| I would think places where wood is, or could reasonably be,
| employed might also work. Table top game tokens, for example.
| Uses where environment factors (rain, contact with the ground,
| etc.) typically aren't relevant.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I just hope that if they're used for straws, that they work
| well enough as straws. All the alternate material straws I've
| tried typically suck. Especially Paper, but have tried a few
| bioplastics as well.
| sircastor wrote:
| Biodegradable plastics are typically degrading in intense
| environments, such as a compost pile. Not unlike wood. Wood is
| strong and lasts a long time if kept dry. If you introduce the
| environment where fungi, microbes, and insects are more
| comfortable, the wood starts to deteriorate.
|
| I don't know quite how it'd work with this kind of plastic, but
| maybe someone will come up with an indicator or rule of thumb
| that helps. Like how you don't eat food out of a dented tin
| can.
| heftig wrote:
| If it were chemically/biologically stable until it has been
| mechanically eroded into microscopic particles, that would at
| least avoid adding to our microplastics problem.
| treve wrote:
| According to the article, food packaging and interior trims of
| cars is mentioned. They also say:
|
| > I think it's realistic that different prototypes in soft and
| hard packaging, such as trays, bottles and bags, will be
| developed within one to five years,"
|
| It sounds like the environmental triggers for degradation are
| naturally occurring microbes.
|
| I hope we keep supporting and funding these projects and solve
| the scale issue!
| normie3000 wrote:
| > interior trims of cars
|
| It might be a step backwards to consider cars single-use.
| almostnormal wrote:
| Leather is biodegradable and an accepted material for cars.
| I don't see why the same shouldn't apply to this.
| themk wrote:
| I'm pretty sure chrome tanned leather is not
| biodegradable in any practical sense.
| nickserv wrote:
| Put it in a healthy compost pile and it will get eaten
| away. Even bone biodegrades, given enough time.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Nature doesn't have compost piles, nor does the ocean's
| giant plastic islands.
|
| If a material only biodegrades at 60 C, then it for
| practical purposes it doesn't biodegrade.
| adrianN wrote:
| If it biodegrades at 60C in a month it's probably gone
| after ten years in the ocean, which is a big improvement.
| esskay wrote:
| Biodegradable plastics typically have a melting temp on
| the lower end. PLA for example is 60c.
|
| I'm not sure many people would be happy coming back to
| their car to open the door to a plastic blob on their
| floor.
| solardev wrote:
| Food wraps, straws, cup liners, plates, bowls, utensils,
| anywhere single use plastics are just there to hold something
| for like 30 min before being discarded.
| jnurmine wrote:
| Still, why plastic nowadays?
|
| Wood and other biodegradeable materials are available. Plenty
| of products already on the market, not just for cutlery but
| things like product packaging, too. Companies exist all over
| the planet, like BioPak from Australia, WoodAble from Chile,
| Sulapac from Finland, Hunufa Compostable from Vietnam, etc.
| adrianN wrote:
| Plastic is cheap and convenient. It also might have a lower
| carbon footprint than alternatives.
| solardev wrote:
| Cheap and easily manufactured using existing processes and
| factories (pellets molded into various films and
| containers).
|
| Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the deluxe
| eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer only, but
| one who frequents such stores). They're almost like a
| lifestyle / branding thing to go along with organic /
| vegetarian / sustainable / local themed restaurants, but
| most don't do that and just want to keep costs down. Most
| just use regular cheap plastic and some still use
| Styrofoam.
|
| I think a bioplastic that actually biodegrades in average
| municipal landfills at a minimal cost markup vs current
| plastics, that say 40% of restaurants adopt voluntarily (or
| by regulation), will be more impactful than the boutique
| reusables we currently see but only at like one restaurant
| per thousand.
|
| I don't ever see places like Walmart or Costco switching to
| wooden bowls, for example. But bioplastics that look and
| feel the same and only cost a few percentage more? Maybe.
| Especially if encouraged by local regulations, similar to
| plastic bag bans.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the
| deluxe eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer
| only, but one who frequents such stores). They're almost
| like a lifestyle / branding thing to go along with
| organic / vegetarian / sustainable / local themed
| restaurants, but most don't do that and just want to keep
| costs down.
|
| Restaurants can be perfectly sincere (and branding isn't
| incompatible with sincerity), but they have tight
| margins. It's their customers who really have the choice,
| and there are very few customers willing to pay extra for
| the eco stuff. It reminds me of this evergreen Onion
| article:
|
| https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-
| commuters-...
| solardev wrote:
| I'm not saying restaurants are insincere about it, just
| that it's a cost of doing business many won't (or can't)
| absorb. It's usually the more expensive hippie-tastic
| places with already-high prices (and hopefully higher
| margins) that can afford them.
|
| Culturally, I don't think customers would accept a choice
| on the matter either, like I've never seen a place offer
| "you can have the plastic box for free, or buy the
| sustainable wooden one for $2". In lieu of that, I used
| to bring my own reusable tupperware to the restaurants
| for takeout, but got a looooooot of strange looks and
| comments about that. What I'd really love to see is more
| of a "borrow a tupperware, bring back a tupperware" model
| where they just loan you containers. I'd only ever seen
| that on college campuses, not in the real world.
|
| Anyway, none of that is really the point. There's nothing
| wrong with fancy sustainable/reusable dishware, but
| something that's incrementally better and not much more
| costly than regular plastic is much more likely to see
| widespread adoption. I think the gradual phase-out of
| styrofoam to plastics is one such example, and cheap
| bioplastics of the less-biodegradable kind are more
| common now (though not everywhere), paperboard boxes with
| some wax paper/foil lining are popping up, some places
| are doing away with bottled plastic water in favor of
| water in milk-like cartons... gradual incrementalism
| seems to work better than revolutionary approaches in
| that industry.
| DFHippie wrote:
| I'm with you. I think you should have to pay extra for
| containers and utensils. Make it a deposit and suddenly
| single-use plastic is multi-use.
|
| Or, as you say, let people provide their own container.
| In any case, if you charge people for the externality you
| will likely end up with less of it.
| jnurmine wrote:
| At least Sulapac sells biodegradeable pellet etc.
| materials which can be used by existing machinery for PS,
| ABS, PC and PP plastics. Probably there are other ones,
| too.
|
| In Sweden, the take-away food I tend to buy is always
| packed in a cardboard box or paper containers. Even the
| drink straws are cardboard in hamburger places. The drink
| cup is cardboard with some sort of biodegradeable (?)
| plastic surface inside. Basically all of that gets
| recycled into the cardboard bin.
|
| Plastic food packaging is not so easy to find, at least
| in places I tend to visit. Even the dip sauces are packed
| in tiny cardboard containers. I guess some places still
| use styrofoam packs, but I have not visited those places
| in many years.
| solardev wrote:
| It varies a lot by location/jurisdiction, especially in a
| place like the US where our waste stream is a confusing
| mishmash of governments of different levels and various
| partnerships with private waste companies who end up
| outsourcing a lot of their recycling. Some places will
| allow bioplastics to be municipally composted at an
| industrial plant near the city. Rural places don't
| typically have such facilities and plastics just go in
| the trash to be landfilled. Other places just burn their
| trash in the backyard. And depending on the jurisdiction,
| there may or may not be any laws or regulations about any
| of this stuff. It's basically up to the states and local
| governments to decide for themselves, which means there's
| like hundreds of different variations across the country.
| Tagbert wrote:
| The point is to have a plastic that breaks down into starches
| and cellulose which are materials that our biomes can hand and
| can break down or incorporate.
|
| The trick will be producing a plastic that is stable enough for
| use but can break down once it is no longer needed. This would
| be useful to replace a lot of plastics that are not used long
| term and are used in dry environments. It probably would not be
| good to store liquids.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Aren't there still plasticizers and other chemicals added?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| All the one time use products that currently end up in a
| landfill (or the oceans) shortly after being manufactured and
| then fail to decompose properly. A lot of plastic products
| don't need to be durable for very long. If it needs to be
| durable, there are perfectly good materials other than plastic
| that you could use that are probably better.
|
| In fact, most plastics don't actually do that well over time
| (some exceptions of course) and aren't that durable. Quite a
| few types of plastic degrade under UV light for example. Of
| course not enough to fully degrade but they become brittle, get
| ugly, etc. If it stayed in one piece and just sat there not
| changing, plastics would actually be less of an issue. The
| issue is that they do degrade and gradually turn into micro
| plastics. Which end up in animal and human tissue causing all
| sorts of issues.
| kazinator wrote:
| We've had this before. Cellophane, linoleum, ...
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| The burning question, is how affordable is this material? That's
| why we use plastics to begin with.
| saulpw wrote:
| Well if it became fashionable I imagine we'd plant more barley
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I'm talking about what goes on between growing barley and the
| end product.
| hiddencost wrote:
| It could be that plastics aren't affordable, their costs are
| just externalities that aren't being accounted properly.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interacti...
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| The point I'm trying to make is if isn't financially
| affordable, then it won't replace plastic on a mass scale.
|
| Otherwise it'll just be another feel good eco-friendly fad
| that'll be adopted by wealthy people in California and fade
| into obscurity.
| happymellon wrote:
| Plastic isn't affordable, we are just placing it all on credit
| at the moment.
|
| [Edit] And letting other people accrue all the debit. If you
| look at the plastic pollution that the west exports to the
| Carribbean, or the Far East for "recycling" it's fairly
| horrifying.
| causal wrote:
| Obviously that's the reason we're seeking biodegradable
| alternatives. But the question remains whether it is cost
| prohibitive to produce.
| metaphor wrote:
| Wonder how gluten-free Danes feel about this tech.
| trickstra wrote:
| Isn't "biodegradable" one of those terms that translates to
| "turns into microplastics after 3 months in industrial
| composter"?
| donatzsky wrote:
| That is talked about in the article. Normally yes, but not in
| this case.
| cassepipe wrote:
| """ Bioplastics already exist, but the name is misleading says
| Blennow. While today's bioplastics are made of bio-derived
| materials, only a limited part of them is actually degradable,
| and only under special conditions in industrial composting
| plants.
|
| I don't find the name suitable because the most common types of
| bioplastics don't break down that easily if tossed into nature.
| The process can take many years and some of it continues to
| pollute as microplastic. Specialized facilities are needed to
| break down bioplastics. And even then, a very limited part of
| them can be recycled, with the rest ending up as waste," says
| the researcher. """
| trickstra wrote:
| "Bioplastics" and "Biodegradable plastics" are two different
| things. One is made from bio origin, second is supposed to be
| degraded by bio processes. This quote actually sounds like
| someone was being intentionally misleading.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| I'm incredibly pro-tech as a rule, but my first reaction here was
| a groan. We'll probably be forced to use plastic replacements
| that are 100x more expensive and come with a new set of problems.
|
| I hate it with a fiery passion when environmentalism is
| disconnected from numbers.
| snaeker58 wrote:
| I agree that plastic replacements come with their own set of
| problems. But what do you see as a better alternative?
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I'm all for thinking economically and deciding based on
| numbers. But we shouldn't forget to include the negative
| externalities into the calculation.
| feydaykyn wrote:
| What about taking the longer view? Most technologies, including
| plastics, were a lot more expensive than the products they
| replaced before going mainstream, with society organizing
| around them and subsidizing many of the costs.
|
| For instance, take petrol-powered cars. It took building
| cemented roads, petrol stations, petrol distribution networks,
| supertankers, boats, trucks, car companies, refineries, etc.
| Cities are built for cars, with large roads while space is at a
| premium and could be used for something else. All that was 100x
| more expensive than horses and came with a new set of problems.
|
| Another topic: plastic "feels" cheaper, but it's because some
| costs are not factored into the price, for instance in
| environment and health. I am not endorsing the following
| report, just citing it as an example of this idea:
| https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?3507866/These-costs-for-plas...
| radu_floricica wrote:
| All this counts into the "I'm usually very pro-tech". The
| point I'm contesting here is pure ideological regulation,
| without numbers behind it. Ban on plastic bags is actually
| the perfect example. You can calculate the number of times
| you need to actually use a reusable bag before it breaks
| even, and it's stratospheric. I'm not googling for a
| (potentially biased) source, but I'm sure you've seen such
| numbers.
|
| And the downside is twofold. First, there's actually a pretty
| decent correlation between how expensive something is and how
| harmful for the environment. If you use a hand-made cloth bag
| made from cotton that was hand-grown in a garden using only
| renewable energy, it's expensive because you have a higher
| number of man-hours spent on it - and those man-hours are
| actually generating orders of magnitude more negative
| externalities for the simple fact of keeping those workers
| alive. The 1 cent plastic bag may be made from oil using
| energy from burning coal, but it's actually much cleaner
| because it used only a fraction of the man-hours. Whenever
| you hear claims that "it's a lot more expensive but it's
| green", the first guess is somebody didn't factor in
| everything.
|
| The second downside is that bans are taking choice away. If
| you think there are negative externalities, and you have a
| good enough argument - by all means, tax those plastic bags
| until you compensate. If there are still objections to people
| buying the more expensive plastic bags, those objections are
| most likely ideological, not practical. Which yes, I still
| continue to hate with a fiery passion.
| samatman wrote:
| > _If you use a hand-made cloth bag made from cotton that
| was hand-grown in a garden using only renewable energy, it
| 's expensive because you have a higher number of man-hours
| spent on it - and those man-hours are actually generating
| orders of magnitude more negative externalities for the
| simple fact of keeping those workers alive._
|
| This style of energy accounting makes no sense to me.
| Humans are going to use up resources and create pollution,
| regardless of what their specific source of income happens
| to be. More artisanal cotton bags means less of something
| else, in some broad sense, but that says nothing about the
| environmental accounting of the other side of the margin.
| The ratio of workers making luxury goods vs. mass producing
| cheaper substitutes for those goods will have little to no
| bearing on how many humans happen to exist, birth rates are
| clearly dominated by other factors.
| feydaykyn wrote:
| I don't want to start a flame war, so I'll stop there.
|
| I want to share a podcast you may be interested in, because
| it's dicussing how to price nature from an economic
| perspective:
|
| Pricing Nature is a limited-series podcast from the Yale
| Center for Business and the Environment and the Yale Carbon
| Charge. It tells a story about the economics, politics, and
| history of carbon pricing, which many argue should play a
| critical role in any national climate policy. We feature
| conversations with carbon pricing experts from government,
| academia, and civil society. To learn more, visit our
| website, pricingnature.substack.com.
| nickserv wrote:
| Yes let's not do anything about a major problem the entire
| world is facing, lest you be slightly inconvenienced.
| jplusequalt wrote:
| The numbers are here: https://www.oecd.org/environment/plastic-
| pollution-is-growin....
|
| Single use plastic is destroying the environment.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And how is it ensured it does not partially degrade beyond use in
| well use? The balance is kinda big question. I do not want some
| material protecting food do degrade before best by date. Or in
| storage if I forget it there for few months.
| viraptor wrote:
| This is a bit of a weird question. Scientific testing - just
| like any other material? Why would it be different for this
| case?
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Biodegrading plastics require above normal amounts of heat in
| order to degrade. I imagine this new bio plastic will be
| similar.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Nature does not have above normal temperature. And I think
| article talk about the also degrading when just tossed to
| nature...
| pajko wrote:
| But if it's possible to degrade it i solar-powered furnaces
| without any hazardous/toxic byproducts, it's already worth
| it. Or if microorganisms could decompose the buried stuff.
| Also composting is an exothermic reaction, generating heat
| up to 60C, which is above normal temperature anyway. The
| question is how waterproof it is, can it get wet or store
| liquids.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >But if it's possible to degrade it i solar-powered
| furnaces without any hazardous/toxic byproducts, it's
| already worth it.
|
| Bottles don't carry themselves to solar-powered furnaces.
| If we assume that they did (and plastic oceans in the
| pacific demonstrate otherwise), then we could target the
| much-easier problem of making plastics that are stable
| when dumped in a landfill.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| I suppose the perfect bottle plastic would biodegrade
| under natural conditions after 5 years or so, but also
| biodegrade rapidly under enhanced conditions (e.g high
| temp, fungi).
|
| That way the lifespan of the contents wouldn't be limited
| by the bottle - minimising food waste - but we'd retain
| the ability to get rid of the bottle safely without huge
| landfills.
| Perz1val wrote:
| So if I leave a bottle of water in summer inside a car,
| then will I be drinking plastic juice?
| kombookcha wrote:
| You already kinda do if you're drinking bottles of water
| left in the car for a long time, time+sun/heat/motion is
| how microplastics are made.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Nature does not have above normal temperature
|
| I wish.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Nature doesn't have a normal temperature. Some places hit
| 40 C regularly, others never go that high.
| arghwhat wrote:
| The highest recorded air temperature is 56.7degC, while
| the lowest is 89.2degC. That's a 145.9degC wide range.
| patates wrote:
| > Nature does not have above normal temperature
|
| Depends on how much you dig I guess?
| panstromek wrote:
| Some biologial processes can create impressive amount of
| heat. Haystacks can catch fire just from the internal
| heating.
| jajko wrote:
| So keeping it a bit on the sun or closed car can instantly
| ruin/pollute ie packaged meat? Despite meat being eatable at
| least for another 12 hours.
|
| I love such things, but they need to be same or better on
| most if not all aspects than current ones, not in fashion:
| better for nature - check; but in these rather common
| situations they are much worse and can be actually hazard to
| humans - check.
| tkzed49 wrote:
| You store raw meat at temperatures that would degrade
| plastic for several hours, then eat it? There's a reason
| they call certain temperatures "the danger zone".
|
| I'd be more than willing to use a more degradable plastic
| for something that needs to get a chilled product from the
| meat department to my home.
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| Most "bioplastics" like PLA want 60C or so; this is
| achievable in industrial composting (it's actually achievable
| in normal composting if you find an expert) but the process
| of getting and keeping the bioreactor to that temperature is
| slow. We'd need a lot of these things, so I hope society
| starts to build them.
|
| But the more I experiment with 3D printing, the more obvious
| it is that the problems include:
|
| - separating this stuff out in the first place so that you
| know what can be composted
|
| - parts fixed with non-biodegradable glues
|
| - dyes, pigments, plasticisers that aren't biodegradable
| either
|
| - difficulty reusing manufacturing waste
|
| Industrial 3D printing is going to be a bigger and bigger
| part of our plastics use over time, because it enables
| products to be iterated long before you reach the kind of
| economy of scale that supports injection moulding. This also
| cuts down on waste; shocking amounts of plastic goes directly
| to landfill because of high-scale unsold inventory.
|
| So a significant development would be actually improving the
| chances of reusing waste. But it's only a small part of that
| problem.
| usrusr wrote:
| Isn't the whole biodegradability thing a bit of a red
| herring anyways? Just have a reasonably good waste
| collection system, then either incinerate (yay,
| dispatchable carbon neutral energy!) or landfill (yay,
| carbon capture and burial!) and call it a victory. The key
| benefit of plant based plastics is that no fossil
| hydrocarbons have been reintroduced back into the active
| cycle to make it.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| I work in manufacturing, and we had this exact issue. We
| implemented biodegradable bags for packaging a product, and
| then found out customers were unhappily opening said product to
| find the decomposed remains of the bags.
|
| Definitely a tricky thing to get right.
| sambazi wrote:
| half-life time in the ten-year range should do the trick
| Agentlien wrote:
| I once bought bio-degradable garbage bags and they rotted and
| fell apart in about a day - meaning they were completely
| unusable unless I took the garbage out at least twice a day.
| leobg wrote:
| Maybe it was a typo. Maybe you didn't buy bio-degradable
| but bio-degrading?
| pajko wrote:
| This seems to be a similar stuff and they are storing water in
| it: https://itsnotplastic.co/faq/
| Qwertious wrote:
| >material that is certified compostable. To be certified
| compostable, the product must be able to break down in a
| commercial compost in under 180 days and not contain harmful
| toxins.
|
| That stuff doesn't biodegrade in natural conditions, only in
| commercial compost.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Most commercial composters grind up the 'compost', and they
| don't care if some plastic particles go through the whole
| process without breaking down.
|
| Just like sand goes through the whole process without
| breaking down.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| So regular plastics are "compostable" as long as you turn
| them into microplastics?
| user32489318 wrote:
| microplastics are the 'nature' now
| smegger001 wrote:
| will this end up on the pile of other biodegradable
| plastic/plastic alternatives that we don't use as they are
| marginally more expensive. like the chitin bioplastic developed a
| few years back or the mycelium based bioplastic or the cellulose
| based...
|
| and more all barely used.
|
| how about we go back to what we used before single use plastic?
| waxed paper wrappers, small wicker punnet baskets for fruit
| burlap sacks for vegetables, infinitely recyclable glass and
| metal beverage container.
| hoseja wrote:
| >marginally more expensive
|
| Also really annoying and impractical to, you know, actually
| use.
|
| Want to fix plastic abuse? Find a way to get rid of third world
| satchets.
| N-Krause wrote:
| I actually switched to store a lot of food related products in
| those wax-cloths. They are great! They are reusable, are
| breathable so that no moisture builds up but not breathable
| enough that, lets say bread for example, goes dry in it. And of
| course completely compostable as they are made of cotton and
| bees wax. If they get dirty you can just scrub them under warm
| running water.
|
| Of course they are way more expensive than buying a roll of
| plastic bags, but I bought them one by one and made plastic
| bags basically obsolete (other than for freezing bread, as that
| does not fit in my freezer containers) in my house hold over
| the course of a year or so. And I expect them, based on
| experience over the last year, to hold for at least another 2
| years without needing to reapply the wax layer or buying new
| ones.
| 4g wrote:
| There are a few problems with beeswax, given the very low
| supply and high demand the price of real beeswax is an order
| of magnitude greater than paraffin wax, so there is a very
| large incentive to at the very least mix in some paraffin.
| Also much of the beehive foundation sheets are made of
| adulterated wax. But even if you managed to find some real
| beeswax, given that bees are collecting pollen from many
| fields that have been treated with pesticide the harmful
| substances tend to accumulate in the beeswax and the
| concentration increases every year if not filtered correctly,
| and given how hard it is to filter it from fatty substance
| you might end up with some in the wax.
| tomcam wrote:
| > and more all barely used.
|
| Barley used.
|
| FTFY
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Ideally, your government would tax the bad thing. But in most
| cases, the bad thing has powerful lobbyists and the government
| is not functioning properly.
| matrix2596 wrote:
| they should call it barely plastic :)
| acec wrote:
| The most biodegradable plastic is the one that is never produced
| londons_explore wrote:
| Sounds rather similar to PLA, corn based plastic:
|
| https://www.treehugger.com/pros-cons-corn-based-plastic-pla-...
| elric wrote:
| It's nice that this seems to address the problem of
| microplastics, but how about the other problems associated with
| plastics? Phthalates/endocrine disruptors/bisphenol?
| rmason wrote:
| When news is announced like this the focus is always on
| biodegradable. They already make biodegradable plastic from corn.
| But it has two problems: it is more expensive and has a rough
| finish which isn't as desirable as a smooth shiny surface.
|
| Here in Michigan we have been trying to find a use for sugar beet
| waste for over forty years. Nothing has ever really caught on.
| Very little barley is grown however in the state but I guess
| there could be if this proves to be competitive with regular
| plastic. In fact Northern Michigan which has too short a growing
| season for corn would be an ideal candidate.
|
| No one ever talks about paper bags. Growing up that's all we ever
| used and it was easily biodegradable. But stores went with the
| cheaper solution.
| dtx1 wrote:
| > No one ever talks about paper bags. Growing up that's all we
| ever used and it was easily biodegradable. But stores went with
| the cheaper solution.
|
| Plastic Bags were banned here in Germany (Maybe EU?) so now you
| can get either Paper Bags or Plastic Bags made from recycled
| plastic water bottles. To be quite honest: The paper bags suck
| because they are fragile and the recycled bags are expensive.
| Abroszka wrote:
| I think it's working as intended. It incentivises buying a
| good quality plastics or cloth bag and reuse.
| yojo wrote:
| Cloth bags are problematic. The Danish EPA put the break-
| even on cotton bags at 7,100 re-uses (or 20,000 for
| organic)[1].
|
| Most people won't shop enough in their life to pay back
| that organic cotton bag - reusing twice a week, it will
| take you 200 years before you break even.
|
| 1: https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93
| 614-... - see section 6.3 for reuse numbers
| ajb wrote:
| It depends on the paper. Some takeaways round here seem to
| come in very robust paper bags, although takeaway is perhaps
| not as challenging as a full bag of groceries.
| dougdimmadome wrote:
| In Ireland a few years ago a plastic bag levy was introduced.
| If you want a plastic bag at the checkout, you have to pay 5c
| for each one.
|
| Now everyone has reusable shopping bags they bring to the
| stores.
|
| The bags are much more rugged than single use plastic bags or
| paper, and reuse is better than recycling.
|
| However, I think shopping bags are probably not the intended
| market for this stuff, and the need is more to replace the
| plastic wrapping that covers food. There have been efforts here
| and in the UK to reduce the amount of packaging in the first
| place but there will continue to be places where we still need
| it for a while
| michael_vo wrote:
| Same in Canada. The reusable bags that the stores sell are
| 5-20$. You get hit once with that and you'll start bringing
| your own bags.
|
| It's actually really simple to influence human behavior with
| pricing!
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Its not all great, these reusable bags are starting to fill
| up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or make an
| unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a few things
| and buy a new bag. Then at home the bags pile up and get
| thrown out. Many are barely 'reusable', the are crap and
| don't get used again an get thrown out (my favorite are the
| ikea bags, they are big and great for groceries - vs many
| grocery store offerings which are garbage).
|
| Nutshell, it they may not be a net plus for the environment
| when so many poor quality bags which are more
| energy/resource intensive to make end up being single-use
| anyway.
| maccard wrote:
| Have you a source for this? Because all the published
| info I've seen says that it is great and it works as
| intended.
| alistairSH wrote:
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-021-0194
| 6-6
|
| I've seen several studies that dispute the efficacy of
| reusable plastic items (bags, cups, etc). The energy
| costs of producing the "sturdy" alternative are often
| high enough to offset the gain in reuse.
|
| IIRC, one study showed that reusing the single-use
| grocery bag one time (as a trash bin liner) was enough to
| put it back ahead of the typical $1 reusable bags
| available at the check-out counter at most grocers.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Since reusable bags have so little mass, I am not so
| concerned about the energy use to produce. More about the
| amount of bags and micro-plastics that escape into the
| environment.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's fair. And I'm definitely in favor of doing
| whatever's best for the environment. Just pointing out
| that it's not as simple as "reusable is better" -
| depending on the set of metrics being measured, it might
| not be.
| dougdimmadome wrote:
| everyone I know has a bag of "bag for life" bags, and yes
| sometimes you forget to bring them and you end up buying
| more. but they're definitely a net good. the amount of
| bags sold to people who forgot theirs is orders of
| magnitude than the number of bags that would be handed
| out when they were free.
|
| I was shocked recently when I visited a shop in another
| european country and they had regular non-reusable bags,
| it seemed so primitive!
|
| > Many are barely 'reusable', the are crap and don't get
| used again an get thrown out
|
| there are thinner plastic ones, but even the lightest
| "reusable" bags we have last for months if not years.
| unless you're buying pineapples and throwing stars every
| time you shop they should last you a while.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| > and they had regular non-reusable bags, it seemed so
| primitive!
|
| It's all about vibes with you people.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > these reusable bags are starting to fill up in
| landfills
|
| Can you cite where this is happening?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The killer is grocery delivery services. They got wrapped
| up in the legislation, so they must deliver groceries in
| reusable bags. It's totally impractical to come an
| collect the bags again (collect, clean, sort), so instead
| our small office, for instance, goes through about a
| dozen of them a month.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| It's all so tiring. Make packaging from manufacturers
| biodegradable by law. Why is the consumer burdened with
| these decisions?
|
| Is this some sort of deranged lobbying scheme?
| camtarn wrote:
| Over here in the UK, our grocery delivery service
| (Sainsburys) just comes to your door with flat crates
| full of unbagged shopping. You meet them at the door and
| transfer the shopping into your own bags. It's a lot
| slower than just grabbing bagged shopping out of the
| crates, and I have no idea how it works for folks in
| flats/apartments (do the delivery folks have to walk each
| crate up four flights of stairs individually?) but it is
| nice that it doesn't cause as much direct waste. Albeit
| that it might cause indirect waste due to now needing
| more vans on the road to service the same number of
| users, hm.
| jstanley wrote:
| You can carry the crate to the kitchen and dump out the
| contents on your worktop/floor. No need for the
| intermediate bagging!
|
| I agree things were easier when they delivered it in bags
| though.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| With the way groceries are usually packed (with
| smashables like bread and milk on top), that sounds like
| a good way to accidentally make French toast.
| chipdart wrote:
| > The killer is grocery delivery services.
|
| I don't think so. This is largely dependant on each
| grocery delivery service, but of you look at it the worst
| cases are actually just continuing business as
| usual,which is hardly a regression. In the meantime, some
| services managed to completely eliminate the use of
| plastic bags.
|
| As an example, for the past year or so I had a groceries
| delivery service use their old plastic bags, but they
| also implemented a charge-back service where they pay you
| back when/if you return them in the following delivery.
| This is clearly an improvement. In the meantime I had
| competing supermarket chains completely switch away from
| single-use bags to alternatives such as reusable plastic
| crates and even reusable cardboard crates. Behemoths such
| as Amazon Fresh completely switched to a mix of paper
| bags, for example.
| namibj wrote:
| Look at VDA's KLT system for example to see something
| that works readily for the reusable crate task. Just hand
| over your empty crate into the empty hands/van-shelf-
| space of the delivery driver after taking the crate with
| your fresh goods out of their hands.
|
| Bonus: the KLT system easily offers enough assistance to
| automated/mechanized handling that the box delivery task
| doesn't require humans.
|
| Could probably easily have a portal crane style 4-wheel
| robot to drive the new box from the van to your door,
| drop it, and bring back an empty box you put out for it.
|
| Well, something about curbs, but the stair dolly (big
| wheel made of 3 smaller wheels) style drive can probably
| cope with most.
|
| Originally the KLT boxes were made to elide re-packing
| and manual box handling in the many-small-supplier-
| companies car industry of Germany. They differ from the
| more widely seen euro boxes by having molded features to
| allow a robot gripper to "plug" into any of the 6 sides
| of the cuboid and get a solid grasp of the box suitable
| for (re-)stacking them as long as their nominal load
| rating is adhered to. Also at least one, if space a short
| and a long side though, have a slot to hold a DIN
| A-series piece of (tick/heavy) paper describing the box
| contents, such that the box won't be contaminated with
| sticky tape residue.
|
| When they're eventually broken from old age or abuse,
| they can be recycled cleanly because they are normed to
| be a pretty specific plastic and to (for interchange at
| least) be one of that colors (grey and a dark blue).
|
| I have seen a local service, picnic, using a small urban-
| only electric truck (if not even a tricycle) who's back
| is just a 120 cm (plus tolerances plus door thing) wide
| shelf to be used with 40x60 cm euro boxes. If they were
| KLTs you could just put the box as-is in your pantry
| instead of doing the "dump onto kitchen table" tactic, I
| guess.
| vlachen wrote:
| There are ways to get around the "oh crap, I forgot the
| bags" depending on how the store does things. For
| example, the Aldi stores I shop at in the US have a
| couple of cages with empty boxes in them. The boxes on
| the shelves get emptied and then the employees round them
| up and drop them in accessible cages/crates. This allows
| a person to choose to either buy a paper bag, buy a
| reusable bag, or make due with a couple of free boxes
| that were going to be disposed of anyways.
| michael_vo wrote:
| costco has been doing this since the beginning!
| vlachen wrote:
| Not something I have in my area, so I have no experience
| with Costco.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| That may vary by location.
|
| The Aldi I usually go to has staff that are so
| ridiculously efficient that there are nearly zero empty
| boxes on the shelves, and the rolling "box cage" is
| nearly always tucked away somewhere unseen unless they're
| actively using it.
|
| This isn't a complaint. It's a nice place to shop, and
| the stock is always very orderly compared to some other
| locations.
|
| But GFS? They've got boxes at the checkout. I think the
| expectation is that the customer is supposed to box their
| own stuff, but they always do it for me if there isn't a
| line.
| vlachen wrote:
| My love of Aldi comes from the fact that my attention
| isn't being accosted as soon as I walk in the door. It's
| the stuff I need, without advertisements, screens, music,
| etc. The price doesn't hurt either. Before I began
| shopping there, I was exclusively at The Fresh Market, so
| when I switched, my grocery bill was cut by 2/3.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Aldi is a good jam, for sure.
|
| Their hardgoods tend to be tremendously high-quality for
| the price, too: Stuff is frequently ~half what I'd expect
| to pay elsewhere for something similar. Their buyers must
| be stellar.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| Where I live, Aldi does not provide boxes or bags of any
| sort. You have to bring your own bags and, barring that,
| take the cart to your car and unload there directly. A
| bit time consuming, but not a disaster. It has been this
| way for at least a decade (as long as I've lived here)
| and people have long been used to it.
|
| It meant that when all other supermarkets stopped
| offering free plastic bags, most of the shopping populace
| was already used to keeping reusable bags in their cars
| or purses, so it was a pretty easy transition.
| chipdart wrote:
| > Its not all great, these reusable bags are starting to
| fill up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or
| make an unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a
| few things and buy a new bag. Then at home the bags pile
| up and get thrown out.
|
| Your comment is a textbook argument of perfect being the
| enemy of good.
|
| Sure, some bags are thrown out. Sure, people use more
| than one. Sure, people can buy them if they feel they
| need them.
|
| That's perfectly fine, as that's completely besides the
| point.
|
| What you're failing to mention is that thanks to this
| push to adopt reusable bags the use of single-use plastic
| bags plummeted. You no longer see over a dozen single-use
| bags being thrown out at each and every single shopping
| trip. These bags aren't recyclable and disintegrate very
| easily, making it extremely hard to pull them out of the
| environment once they get there.
|
| You're also somehow leaving out is the fact that some
| major supermarkets chains are making available reusable
| shopping bags made of natural fiber. It's not a given
| that you're replacing large volumes of single-use plastic
| with small volumes of reusable plastic, as you're also
| seeing small volumes of natural fabric being used.
|
| You're also leaving out the fact that this push is taking
| single-use plastic out of the market but nothing forces
| customers to adopt the store's own offerings. Anyone is
| able to buy whatever type of shopping bag suits their
| fancy.
|
| So no, you're not seeing plastic being replaced with
| plastic. You're seeing drastic reductions in plastic use
| by eliminating perverse incentives to consume single-use
| plastic containers, and the adoption of substitute goods
| that have a far preferable environmental footprint.
| coryrc wrote:
| Why care if they get thrown out? If you are the median
| American, you burnt (aka "disposed of in the atmosphere")
| far more petroleum driving to the store than a hundred
| single-use bags. I bet a single bag is of comparable
| volume to tire wear. Get off your high horse and start
| focusing on real problems. Automobiles are responsible
| for more micro-plastics than single-use items, plus 6PPD
| poisoning us. Single-use plastics are just a useful tool
| to distract from the real sources of pollution.
| michael_vo wrote:
| I've heard this argument before and totally agree that
| single use plastics are a tiny fraction of the total
| problem. But as a Canadian I like that the law forced me
| to think about my consumption habits, as well as it
| helped create conversation topics with other people.
| coryrc wrote:
| That's exactly the outcome they wanted. Are those
| discussions leading to action on topics to reduce
| automobile dependence (the actual source of micro-plastic
| contamination)? If not, then you're part of the problem.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > Why care if they get thrown out? If you are the median
| American, you burnt (aka "disposed of in the atmosphere")
| far more petroleum driving to the store than a hundred
| single-use bags. I bet a single bag is of comparable
| volume to tire wear. Get off your high horse and start
| focusing on real problems. Automobiles are responsible
| for more micro-plastics than single-use items, plus 6PPD
| poisoning us. Single-use plastics are just a useful tool
| to distract from the real sources of pollution.
|
| I don't understand why you insist that we need to solve
| the "real" problems of pollution before we dare think
| about other smaller, easier to solve problems. It's not
| like we're playing a video game where society only has a
| finite amount of elbow grease to apply to this set of
| issues. We can reduce plastic bag pollution while also
| working toward reducing the pollution from automobiles,
| tire wear, and whatever else you on your own high horse
| have deigned to be "real problems".
|
| These are not conflicting goals.
| coryrc wrote:
| Throwing plastic in the trash is not pollution.
|
| "We" are not working on solving those other actual
| sources of pollution. We're just making people's lives
| worse. People think they've "done their part" by not
| using bags, when they haven't done shit.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I think your response is overly optimistic; what you're
| saying is _possible_, but actual deployment of the policy
| leaves quite a bit to be desired.
|
| So, when you say
|
| > So no, you're not seeing plastic being replaced with
| plastic.
|
| I think immediately of NJ's attempt to wrangle this
| problem.
|
| > While the state's ban -- which, unlike those of other
| states, also prohibited single-use paper bags -- led to a
| more than 60 percent decline in total bag volumes, it
| also had an unintended consequence: a threefold increase
| in plastic consumption for grocery bags.
|
| > How this happened is no mystery.
|
| > The massive increase in plastic consumption was driven
| by the popularity of heavy-duty polypropylene bags, which
| use about fifteen times more plastic than polyethylene
| plastic bags.
|
| > "Most of these alternative bags are made with non-woven
| polypropylene, which is not widely recycled in the United
| States and does not typically contain any post-consumer
| recycled materials," the study explains. "This shift in
| material also resulted in a notable environmental impact,
| with the increased consumption of polypropylene bags
| contributing to a 500% increase in greenhouse gas (GHG)
| emissions compared to non-woven polypropylene bag
| production in 2015."
|
| https://fee.org/articles/new-jerseys-plastic-bag-ban-
| backfir...
|
| I'm supportive of the goal, but I really do think that
| making laws that are simple solutions to complex problems
| really can backfire and be a net negative, so we need to
| think several steps ahead.
| Tagbert wrote:
| you should shop around. I see the heavy plastic bags in the
| US$2-5 range. Check out Trader Joe's if you have them. I've
| been using the same couple of TJ bags for years.
| opdahl wrote:
| In Norway the price increased to about 50 cents per plastic
| bag. I know it made me start carrying a reusable bag.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Yeah, FWIW, this kind of bag fee is very common in the U.S.
| as well, with the same effects (though perhaps not in
| northern Michigan). In fact, single use plastic bags are
| outright banned in many parts of the U.S. I guess I'm not
| sure what GP means by "No one ever talks about paper bags."
| flakeoil wrote:
| I guess they mean that paper bags are biodegradable and
| have been for ever. However, plastic bags have been used
| instead as they are cheaper. He says cost is what drives
| this so for a barley or corn plastic bag to work it has to
| be as cheap as a regular plastic bag or at least cheaper
| than a paper bag.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| It's far from clear that "reusable" (thick, thin plastic bags
| are reusable too) plastic bags are a better deal
| environmentally. If you have to get 300 uses out of a thick
| one to break even, does the average "reusable" hit this
| number?
| whartung wrote:
| I loathe modern grocery store "reusable" bags. They can't
| be recycled, in that I can't toss them into my blue bin, I
| have to take them back to the store (I don't) and story is
| nothing happens to them anyway. I hate the texture of them,
| I hate the way the lay. I find them just awful.
|
| For the grocery store, we have a set of, I guess, 10 or so
| cloth bags we use. We've used the core set every week for
| over 12 years. Had a tailor stitch up a hole in one of them
| once, wash them every few months.
|
| We have a large, cloth Target logo'd bag I stuff in the
| bottom. It's about 1.5x the size of the normal ones, if I
| put it on top they inevitably drag it out first and fill it
| with the milk, juice, bowling balls (both of them), cinder
| blocks and whatever else is super heavy that we happened to
| buy that day. "But it fits!" "Yea, and now it weight 50lb!"
| Couldn't stuff it with cotton balls, stuffed animals, and
| the Cool Whip.
|
| So, yea, bottom of the bag it goes.
|
| I know there are concerns with cloth, and we wrap notably
| meats in the light plastic bags to help contain
| contamination. It's not been a real problem.
|
| We've just started (past few months) using reusable mesh
| bags for the produce, that's working out ok so far.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Reuse is better than recycling when the reusable bags are
| more efficient to produce / number of uses than single use
| bags. More than one researcher has disputed this for
| "reusable" plastic bags. (I reuse the "non-reusable" ones...)
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I just reuse the paper bags, and I really wish someone would
| sell slightly thicker better-built paper bags because they
| have a lot of good attributes versus reusable bags. They
| biodegrade, they're made from waste and recycled wood and
| paper pulp, and they can be produced locally. The only thing
| that makes them not ideal is the handles tear off.
|
| Frequently the store staff have to double-bag everything with
| paper because the bags tear so easily. But when double-bagged
| I can get 5 or 10 uses out of them, which suggests that the
| bag just needs to be thicker to be highly reusable.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The only thing that makes them not ideal is the handles
| tear off.
|
| Do you live in California? Nevada? I bet it is somewhere
| hot and dry. Paper bags are not fun in the pacific
| northwest, or the north, or deep south ... basically
| anywhere with moisture in the air. Either you put them down
| in a puddle by accident, or you get snow on them and it
| melts in your car on the way home. Either way, the bottom
| will fall out the moment you pick them up.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Bankers boxes would probably last for years of use. Built
| in handles. Stackable and rigid in a vehicle.
| mulmen wrote:
| This could work but you'd probably need to re-think the
| shopping cart too so they can be easily re-used.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Paper bags are available in a range of thicknesses, just as
| approximately every other paper product is.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I don't remember the exact figure off the top of my head, but
| if memory serves well it was in the ballpark of a decade that
| you could buy a new plastic bag every day and throw it away
| after, and it would still create less CO2 in total than one
| reusable cloth bag. Modern plastic is ridiculously cheap to
| manufacture whereas reusable bags waste a lot of energy and
| water. A good example of a movement where people feel good
| about themselves, but actually they're not making things
| better.
| jahnu wrote:
| Last I read that was debunked. It was based on one study or
| article that made a really bad assumption and then it
| spread. Someone went and did the figures again and it was
| way off by a few orders of magnitude and in fact only a few
| uses of a reusable bag means it's better. Like you I don't
| have the link to hand sorry.
| mrspuratic wrote:
| Externalities are hard.
|
| https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-
| paper-c...
|
| By estimated impact: cotton > paper > plastic, but more
| constructively:
|
| > Ultimately, the single use of any bag is the worst
| possible choice. The key to reducing your environmental
| impact is to use whatever bags you have around the house
| as many times and in as many ways as possible.
| coryrc wrote:
| So it's better that I need to pay for thicker bags just
| to put in my wastebasket to collect trash? How is that
| better than getting a t-shirt bag from the store to carry
| my items home, then use the bag to line my trash, then
| throwing the mess away?
|
| By volume I throw away more diapers in a month than an
| entire lifetime of plastic bags. Fighting plastic bags is
| what the rich companies making actual pollution want you
| to focus on so you aren't fighting real pollution.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > Fighting plastic bags is what the rich companies making
| actual pollution want you to focus on so you aren't
| fighting real pollution.
|
| Why can't we fight both? Reducing both plastic bag
| pollution _and_ "real" pollution seems better than just
| one or the other.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| People have limited campaigning energy and politicians
| have limited political capital, so it probably does
| divert some attention from the bigger problems.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| CO2 is not the only factor. You also have to look at the
| plastic bags that are floating around in rivers and oceans.
| mrspuratic wrote:
| That's not all they're [ultimately] floating around in...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/
| 20/...
| breakfastduck wrote:
| CO2 isn't the driver here, it's mountains of non
| biodegradable plastic bags getting into rivers, oceans,
| everywhere.
| coryrc wrote:
| That basically doesn't happen in the USA so there's not a
| reason to switch here.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly. I don't understand why this isn't acknowledged
| more.
|
| Banning plastic bags in the US does absolutely _nothing_
| for the plastic bags clogging waterways in Asia.
|
| Sometimes people think plastic recycling in the US is
| shipped to Asia where it ends up in waterways but that's
| not a thing either. It might get buried in a landfill
| there rather than recycled, but compressed pallets of
| plastic recycling aren't getting dumped into rivers.
| That's not a thing. The bags aren't flying away in the
| wind or something either. All the plastic clogging rivers
| -- that's all _local consumer littering_.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| That's because the US exports plastic waste to other
| countries. So yes, there is good reason.
| munch117 wrote:
| I was under the impression that Americans landfilled
| their garbage. I don't doubt that waste export is a
| thing, but is it really that large a proportion?
| danmaz74 wrote:
| Most reusable bags here in Italy are still made of plastic,
| but much sturdier than single use shopping bags. Personally
| I like them. My only issue is the few times when I forget
| to put them back into my car.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| We have that in Spain too. I still pay for the plastic bag
| like 50% of the time, because they're useful to take out the
| trash. Otherwise I wouldn't be paying the 5c but I would need
| to buy trash bags.
|
| PS: the best reusable shopping bag I have is a traditional
| Taiwanese shopping bag a friend brought from there. Light,
| beautiful, rugged, holds a lot of weight, seems
| indestructible. A pity they don't sell these here, I live in
| fear of losing it :D
| teleforce wrote:
| Sound great, any particular brand?
| happyopossum wrote:
| Similar thing in California happened about 10 years ago - 10
| cents per bag. Unfortunately, it backfired - because the 10
| cent bags are thicker (they can't be designed for "single
| use", so they have to be thick enough to be "reusable"), the
| amount of plastic bag waste in landfills has actually risen
| dramatically in that time.
|
| California kinda screwed up by not mandating paper bags, or
| carving out an exception for them to promote their use.
|
| [0]https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/01... - page 14
| whycome wrote:
| Those reusable bags are made of plastic. They degrade in
| different ways. How many bags did they replace when they
| reach their end of life? Where do they go at the end of life?
| How much do they cost?
|
| The previous plastic bags may have been reused (ie for small
| garbage bags). Are consumers now just purchasing equivalent
| plastic bags for that purpose?
|
| I think there are so many unanswered questions and the
| benefits can vary by region.
| spinach wrote:
| Paper bags might be biodegradable, but then we have issues with
| deforestation for the material.
| parineum wrote:
| Carbon capturing tree farms are where most (all?) paper
| products come from.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Not to mention the bags are usually made from significant
| amounts of recycled paper. So you're already getting a
| second use out of the material.
|
| I feel like in the 80's when there was a big "paper kills
| trees" moral panic the plastic companies took advantage of
| that to market plastic, and paper companies started
| recycling their products and developing fast-growing
| pulpwood species to plantation farm sustainably. And now we
| could absolutely go back to paper with fewer ill effects.
| It's probably better for the planet because even if your
| paper bags end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
| something will decompose them into their organic
| constituents very rapidly and they won't agglomerate into
| rocks on beaches somewhere.
| esskay wrote:
| PLA (biodegradable corn) is often sold as being a good
| biodegradable plastic. It ommits the part where its only
| biodegradable in a high pressure, high heat industrial
| composter. If you put PLA in your home composter it'll still be
| exactly as it was in 5 years time.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| If the PLA is plasticizer-free and derived from vegetation,
| it can be burned without pollution. It's not like there's a
| bunch of chlorine or fluorine atoms in the molecule.
|
| > If you put PLA in your home composter it'll still be
| exactly as it was in 5 years time.
|
| More interested in learning to make it myself. Daughter and I
| have been extracting starch from potatoes, and we can
| reliably ferment to lactic acid. Distillation's trickier, and
| everything else after that's just bugshit crazy. Have to
| ferment M. hexanoica, it needs to be fed very specific
| nutrients to produce capryilic acid, extraction of that will
| be even more insane, and there seems to be no good source for
| tin in modern life. I've found a dozen tin scrapping videos
| on Youtube where you watch them and think to yourself "did
| they just screw around with soluble lead salts without even
| mentioning it?".
|
| Also, I've had spontaneous combustion in our compost before.
| Maybe your compost game's just weak. Be sure to spread grass
| clippings until they're no longer deeper than about 3".
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'd argue burning it is worse then sequestering it.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Ok. Argue that. What about it is worse than sequestering
| it? If microplastics are so bad, you'd rather it just sit
| there slowly breaking down into small chains of lactic
| acid, and those leaching into ground and surface water
| and blowing around int he wind?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Microplastics, while terrible for the environment and
| humans, aren't going to cause societal collapse over the
| next hundred years. CO2 is.
| robrichard wrote:
| Here in New Jersey, paper bags were banned
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I seem to remember that a big issue motivating getting rid of
| paper bags (at the time) was "saving trees."
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| It's a pity that our school system has failed so many people
| by not teaching them some basics of economics, which is that
| the supply of trees is elastic and can increase with
| demand/price, and will decrease with decreased demand/price.
|
| Not using trees will only incentivize people to re-allocate
| land that was used for the cultivation of trees to the
| cultivation of something else that is higher demand, and thus
| profitable.
|
| The only way that not using paper will save trees is if we
| stopped all forms of cultivation/farming.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'd like to see a useful spectrum of classifications between
| "lasts forever as a pollutant" and "dissolves in water". As in
| _How biodegradeable is it?_. I think that would help make
| distinctions between the many "biodegradeable" options.
|
| You want something that is just biodegradeable enough that it
| doesn't become a forever problem, but not biodegradeable enough
| that it mixes with food or becomes useless as a food container.
|
| The worst offender is compostable bags: They can hold trash for
| about 1 day before they become the trash.
| jpalawaga wrote:
| protip, store your compost (with bag) in the freezer. not
| only will it not smell, but your bag won't degrade until you
| go and take it out.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Brilliant! Thank you.
| julianlam wrote:
| That's a little weird for a bag designed to hold
| biodegradable products... have you tried other brands?
|
| I buy mine from Costco and they easily last 2-3 days (the
| amount of time it usually takes for the pail inside my house
| to fill up). I take care not to dump wet items in, though not
| exhaustively so, e.g. coffee grounds are OK, sauce and
| liquids go down the drain.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > Here in Michigan we have been trying to find a use for sugar
| beet waste for over forty years. Nothing has ever really caught
| on.
|
| Seems like it caught on in road deicer? I remember seeing ice
| melt sold with it up in ontario:
| https://modernfarmer.com/2022/01/beet-juice-deicer/
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Problem is it's pretty low value. Better than dumping it down
| the drain, but barely. Better than salt for surrounding
| plants/waterways, but the salt spreaders don't pay that cost.
| tw04 wrote:
| > But stores went with the cheaper solution.
|
| Right, because a business will almost always take the cheapest
| option possible unless there is direct customer pushback. It
| turns out consumers are really bad about thinking about long
| term (think decades) consequences that don't immediately
| provide negative feedback.
|
| Which is why we have government, to protect society from risks
| that may happen over a longer period of time or fall out of
| their direct control. Think: the EPA.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >Here in Michigan we have been trying to find a use for sugar
| beet waste for over forty years.
|
| In India and other countries where sugarcane is grown, people
| use bagasse (a byproduct of crushing sugarcane for making
| sugar) for various purposes.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse
| naltroc wrote:
| Found out about wheat based plastic when I bought some reusable
| food storage containers. This was not clearly labelled but
| instead a smalltext on the back of the package.
|
| As a person with an extreme gluten allergy, I freaked out and had
| to return it before even trying.
|
| If any plastics manufacturers see this, and you use barley,
| wheat, or any other gluten containing material (like rye), please
| also include a "Certified Gluten Free" seal when your processing
| plant has been verified to be safe. Otherwise I can't use your
| product.
| hollerith wrote:
| Some plywood uses glue made from wheat, but you probably
| already knew that.
| EdwardCoffin wrote:
| The commenter was clearly concerned about wheat-derived
| _food_ containers. Is plywood now used in making such now,
| and I missed it?
| hollerith wrote:
| Well, gee, excuse me for going off-topic to make sure that
| someone describing themselves as "a person with an extreme
| gluten allergy" knows to watch out for plywood.
|
| Going off-topic almost never happens here, and I'm very
| sorry I went off-topic for such a trivial selfish reason.
| EdwardCoffin wrote:
| Generally avoiding plywood isn't actually useful advice
| for someone with even a serious problem with gluten:
| "simply touching gluten will not harm an individual with
| celiac disease." [1]
|
| The above source does continue: "...there can be a risk
| of ingesting airborne gluten, which is usually caused by
| flour. It is also important to remember not to prepare
| gluten-free foods in spaces where there is a risk of
| airborne gluten, as particles will settle on the food,
| making it unsafe for those with celiac disease to eat."
| [1] Perhaps you meant to imply something more in this
| line, that say the sawdust from cutting plywood could be
| a potential problem if food is nearby?
|
| In the same spirit as your apology, let me apologize for
| assuming that your original advice was sarcastic
| commentary about people who are gluten-free rather than
| genuine though ill-informed advice.
|
| [1] https://www.beyondceliac.org/gluten-free-diet/cross-
| contact/....
| mdorazio wrote:
| Rather than do 30 seconds of basic googling you instead decided
| it was awful and returned it? This comment is just bizarre to
| see on HN.
|
| Wheat-based plastic is made from wheat _straw_ , not wheat
| grains. The straw has no gluten to start with and it sure as
| hell doesn't after the chemical treatment required to
| plasticize it.
| kwoff wrote:
| I've had celiac for over a quarter century, but my first
| thought seeing the headline was something like "oh no,
| another thing to look for?" Then I realized, like you said,
| it probably depends on how it's made.
|
| Not to exaggerate, but there's a sort of low-key "trauma"
| associated with celiac. I used to have nightmares where I'd
| eat bread or something without realizing it (should I throw
| up? do people think I'm faking it? why didn't I remember to
| check if it has gluten?). There are these gluten-free
| burritos in the gluten-free section. The other day, I got one
| out of my freezer and only after opening the package and
| seeing the burrito was a bit browner than usual and thinking
| "is this spoiled?", then I thought "wait, is this not gluten-
| free?" and verifyied the package...didn't say gluten-free.
| Next time in the store, I found they have non-gluten-free
| burritos beside the gluten-free ones, in the freezer marked
| gluten-free.... They often do this in the gluten-free
| bread/etc aisle, too, right next to the gluten-free stuff.
| And recently they stopped adding green "gluten free" labels
| on the price tags which were handy when strolling down the
| aisles, so now I'm back in "turn every package around to
| check for allergens" mode. Anyway, just saying I understand
| OP's knee-jerk reaction.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| Ah, the cookie nightmares, always a nice experience... Good
| to hear I'm not the only one though.
|
| Interesting times might be ahead actually. As the world
| moves away from meat and plastics (which is great, don't
| get me wrong!), the glue-iness of gluten seems to play a
| central role.
|
| There are the biodegradable plastics on the one side, which
| in contrast to their contents don't need to be marked as
| containing gluten (at least in Germany and at least for
| now), and on the other side, 90% of the stuff I see in the
| ,,vegan replacements of originally-non-vegan food" aisles
| are based on wheat; which isn't a problem while it's only a
| partial slice of the market, but might get interesting for
| cealiacs if one day those products replace the originals
| completely.
| EdwardCoffin wrote:
| People with celiac disease have to go to great lengths to
| avoid things that have even the possibility of cross
| contamination. I can easily imagine that the processing that
| wheat straw goes through is not stringent enough to ensure
| that no wheat grains are not inadvertently included.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| Rather than to inform yourself on the matter you instead
| decided you are entitled to tell a person with an autoimmune
| disease how their world works?
|
| There are some first studies which show that yes, some of
| those biodegradables do contain gluten and yes, they do
| contaminate their contents in doses that are above the
| threshold for a person with cealiac disease. The latest issue
| of the DZG magazine (German Cealiac Disease Society) reported
| on it.
| botanical wrote:
| They don't say on what order it is biodegradable. Is it a week?
| That would be useless for its use as a disposable carrier for
| food, beverages, etc; these are the things that are polluting our
| world on a large scale. Or is it a decade?
| causal wrote:
| > ... can completely decompose in nature--and do so within only
| two months
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| The issue is China. Most of Europe and USA have laws that disuade
| single use plastics.
|
| In China where you can get door to door delivery for a single cup
| of bubble tea that includes, a plastic cup, lid, straw, and
| spoon, plastic holder to keep the cup upright , thermal bag to
| keep the bubble tea cold , and another bag for the delivery guy
| to hand carry. It's fucking bonkers the amount of waste they
| produce.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Western voters keep voting for impractical regulation that just
| result in production shifting to countries with no regulation,
| where the goods get produced with severely detrimental social
| and environmental consequences.
|
| I think people should seriously ask themselves, if they are not
| for some form of deregulation in their own country, why are
| they fine with buying things produced without that regulation
| from other countries?
|
| If USA and Europe banned all imports of goods produced in
| economies with lower regulation than theirs, then China's bad
| labour and environmental practices will become mostly
| inconsequential, as their production volume would be mostly
| inconsequential. Furthermore, if USA and Europe had reasonable
| domestic regulations, they would not need to buy so many goods
| from China to begin with.
|
| Another way to think about it, the greatest beneficiary of
| environmental regulation in the west has not been the
| environment. It has been non-western countries where the
| regulation does not apply.
|
| Germany shuts down their nuclear power plants, and as a result,
| you get war in Ukraine, and Germany anyway ends up buying
| nuclear power from France because it's become somewhat
| unfashionable for Germany to keep bankrolling Putin's
| aggression.
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| I'm talking about locals living in Chinese. What you're
| talking about is tangential, but the single use culture is
| astronomical and their middle class outnumbers Europe and USA
| because of their large population who participate in this
| single use culture. It's mind boggling the waste you will see
| in Chinas river and natures in the cities and outskirts
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It's good that there is research in this area but I always doubt
| whether it can be scaled up to a meaningful level without doing
| other damage. In the end I think we need to work more on
| reduction and reuse even if it's mildly less convenient.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Hot take, plant origin plastics should be deliberately engineered
| to be non biodegradable so we can lock that carbon up in a
| landfill instead of releasing it back into the atmosphere
| DFHippie wrote:
| This is basically what we have now and there is an enormous and
| growing pollution problem due to the non-degrading plastic.
|
| If we could get people to dispose of their waste in a landfill
| always and forever, this might work, but in practice people
| treat the world like an open sewer.
| vikramkr wrote:
| (don't 100% buy this take but don't think it's completely
| invalid either lol) Arguably, that problem is worse in
| countries with poor landfill/trash collection infrastructure,
| the US isn't in the top ten for example
| (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-
| plastic...). And in places like the US, the difference
| between plant sourced and fossil fuel sourced plastic is that
| plant based would shift the externality calculation towards
| net positive externalities, since it would shift the plastic
| industry towards ideally becoming a net carbon sink and
| leverage consumerism and america's love of single use
| plastics and packaging to create a market for carbon capture.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Isn't there this tension between "useful as a food package /
| eating utensil" and "harmful as trash"? You want something that
| is _just biodegradeable enough_ that it doesn 't become a forever
| problem, but _not biodegradeable enough_ that it mixes with food
| or becomes useless as a food container.
|
| The worst offender is compostable bags: They can hold trash for
| about 1 day before they _become_ the trash.
| orblivion wrote:
| Maybe there needs to be a triggering event. Like, becomes
| compostable when exposed to a certain sort of uncommon
| radiation that you can bombard a landfill with.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Or just microwave the whole thing? /s
| panstromek wrote:
| I think that's actually how some biodegradable things work,
| you have to expose them to 150degC or something like that.
| mog_dev wrote:
| Keep your organic waste in your fridge and take it out every
| 3/4 days, the compostable bags will survive 2 weeks before
| degrading. Freezer also works
| willy_k wrote:
| I'm bullish on hemp as a replacement for plastics, it can be
| used for many of the same purposes (textiles, packaging), as
| paper, is easy to grow, inert, and stable yet biodegradable.
| Hemp had a shot at becoming mainstream before Henry Anslinger
| went on his cannabis crusade, and though it was legalized in
| 2018, plastics have too much momentum for hemp to become a
| common solution without major regulatory change.
| atlasy1 wrote:
| This is no different to creating a 'Nut plastic' and advocating
| to use it to package food
|
| Totally ignoring the rights to safety people with severe gluten
| and nut allergies have.
|
| We won't tolerate this. We won't stand for it.
|
| People with life threatening allergies and potential to get
| injuries (crohns) will not allow this to become standard practice
|
| Most labelled gluten free food is not gluten free. Its just under
| a specific threshold. It still makes many people very ill if they
| eat it.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| This is research-stage, calm down. Nobody is forcing anyone
| into anaphylaxis.
| orangepenguin wrote:
| Are you allergic to cellulose or amylose? Because those are the
| two molecules the plastic is made of. They're not making
| plastic out of gluten.
| fortran77 wrote:
| If the plastic is made from renewable plant material and has no
| other environmental impact, why does it need to biodegrade? Can't
| you just bury it without fear of contaminating water or relasing
| microplastics? And won't that effectively sequester carbon?
| ksd482 wrote:
| Can it be used for medical products such as syringes and vials?
| Is research being done there?
|
| I had a close relative admitted in hospital for 2 weeks and I saw
| them use and throw so much plastic like I have never seen before;
| think 100 gallon bucket of plastic. I am not discounting the
| benefits plastics have brought to medicine such as hygiene, but I
| am concerned its environmental impact.
|
| I also understand that industrial plastic waste is probably an
| order of magnitude greater than that in medicine.
|
| But I am curious what sort of test a biodegradable/sustainable
| plastic would need to stand for it to replace traditional
| plastics.
| mjevans wrote:
| In a hospital setting the alternative materials would be some
| types of glass and steels. Those mostly have the downsides of
| being expensive, tough to clean correctly, and higher liability
| if someone breaks them.
|
| I don't think it'd be easily possible to easily replace plastic
| tubing, particularly the clear aspect.
| esbranson wrote:
| Also see the proposed EU regulation on packaging and packaging
| waste.[1][2] It aims to "bring clarity to consumers and industry
| on biobased, compostable and biodegradable plastics".[3] In the
| US we have companies like BPI and ASTM. :/
|
| [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/AUTO/?uri=celex:5...
|
| [2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2022_396
|
| [3]
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...
| southwesterly wrote:
| Looking forward to never hearing anything about this again.
| bdjsiqoocwk wrote:
| Can't wait to never hear about this ever again
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