[HN Gopher] Researchers develop 'transparent paper' as alternati...
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Researchers develop 'transparent paper' as alternative to plastics
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 367 points
Date : 2025-06-06 21:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (japannews.yomiuri.co.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (japannews.yomiuri.co.jp)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The bag is good, the cup is good, but the straw is a terrible
| idea.
| firtoz wrote:
| Why? Will it get soggy like the regular paper straws?
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| If it's as they describe... it should not. so a good straw
| replacement.
| 9rx wrote:
| If it is as described, won't it harm turtles in the same
| way plastic straws do? That is, after all, why paper straws
| became popular following that viral video that went around.
| Poor structural integrity was the desirable trait they
| offered.
| junon wrote:
| The "harming turtles" thing was wildly overstated, to
| start.
|
| Also, ideally not, because the turtles that were claimed
| to be affected are in the ocean, where the straws
| degraded in just a few months.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Why?
|
| They say the physical properties are like polycarbonate: no
| problem there.
|
| They don't say how fast it degrades in ideal conditions but do
| say it takes 4 months in poor conditions, and that it requires
| microbes not merely water, or oxygen or other chemistry or uv
| etc, but microbes: sounds like it won't be touched at all in
| your soda even after a week.
|
| Where is the terrible part?
| constantcrying wrote:
| It doesn't have the same physical properties. Even the idea
| of that is ridiculous, one physical property the article
| mentions it its degradability.
|
| "Strength" is also a meaningless metric to compare, it just
| is not a material property.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense and is not responsive to the
| points from GP.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is probably like the transparent windows made of wood - the
| chemicals to make it aren't any better than the ones used to make
| plastic.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Can you share what knowledge you have of the materials and/or
| process that implies this is likely the case?
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| They briefly describe the process in the article, and very
| different from the "transparent wood" I think you are referring
| to. I'll try to summarise from my brief understanding.
|
| - Transparent wood takes wood, dissolves the lignin (natural
| wood glue-ish) with a solvent, and replaces it with epoxy under
| pressure. It's a pain to make, but is very cool and preserves
| the wood fibre structure.
|
| - This transparent paper involves dissolving very pure
| cellulose (long starch) and then allowing it to reconnect
| tightly (with heat) before drying. It appears to be composed
| primarily of cellulose at the end and exhibits plastic
| properties. I presume the chemicals change the cellulose
| properties to allow this.
|
| "lithium bromide-water" is (apparently, I was corrected) not
| very toxic and lilley recycled in the process. If this can be
| scaled and the solvent process can be done safely, then its
| very clever. It's effectively plastic but using a more
| "natural" carbon chain, which nature has had a few million
| extra years to figure out how to break down.
|
| They describe it as paper and compare it to polycarbonate... so
| my guess is that it is a bit brittle, and cannot nicely replace
| plastic wrap or plastic bags... but it has some nice properties
| to replace a group of plastics we don't have very good
| alternatives to. One open question I have is UV resistance.
| Most transparent plastics tend to become brittle over time...
| but I don't know my chemistry enough to know if cellulose has
| the same issue. Greenhouses would otherwise benefit from it (as
| they're often made from polycarbonate sheets rather than glass)
| kurthr wrote:
| I don't know why it "Sounds toxic as s*t". It's a reactive
| salt. LD50 is ~1gram so don't swallow or get it in your eyes
| or nose. It seems comparable in hazard to commonly available
| cleaning compounds like ammonia and bleach.
|
| That doesn't make it safe, but it's not a crazy carcinogen or
| auto-immune risk, and it literally dissolves in water. It's
| present in all sea water ~0.1ppm so you can't escape it.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| Bromine itself is very toxic, but it all depends on the
| dose and form (it's used as an anti-algae agent). The
| article doesn't mention the concentration or if it remains
| in the end product. I'm not a chemist though, most of my
| knowledge comes from nilered.
| billyjmc wrote:
| I'm a chemist. Bromine isn't bromide, and lithium bromide
| is a simple nontoxic salt. If this is as simple as is
| described in the news article, then it's likely a pretty
| "green" process overall.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| Oo! Very nice. I've updated my comment, as i stand
| corrected.
| delibes wrote:
| That's a bit like chlorine gas is poisonous, but sodium
| chloride (salt) makes things tasty.
|
| Highly different compounds, that just contain chlorine
| atoms.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| Different goals: - Developing transparent wood is about cutting
| costs - https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/transparent-
| wood-c... - Developing this material is about reducing and
| eventually eliminating plastic
| kazinator wrote:
| Old is new again?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| Sounds similar to cellophane. But the process to make it is
| very different. Maybe it has some new properties that
| cellophane doesn't.
| ihodes wrote:
| "(...) They can be used to make containers because they are
| thicker than conventional cellulose-based materials. The new
| material is expected to replace plastics for this purpose, as
| plastics are a source of ocean pollution."
| 90s_dev wrote:
| I genuinely wonder if the Romans _actually_ had peak technology
| _all things considered & balanced_.
| astrospective wrote:
| Too much lead.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| It actually wasn't poisonous given the circumstances.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Could you elaborate? Just because it was less poisonous
| than it could have been, does not make it non-poisonous.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| I dunno I read it somewhere that some other thing in the
| pipes formed a protective layer that prevented the lead
| from actually seeping into the water or something
| fuzzer371 wrote:
| Same thing happened in Flint Michigan, the lead pipes
| weren't the issue; They stopped treating the water a
| certain way and the slight acidity in the water caused
| (iirc) some sort of calcium carbonate or sodium
| bicarbonate layer to be washed away until the acidic
| water started leaching lead into the water.
| e44858 wrote:
| They would cook food in lead pots, which made it
| poisonous:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate#Sweetener
| phire wrote:
| I have a hard time using "balanced" and Roman in the same
| sentence.
|
| Maybe the technology was "balanced", but the society
| certainly wasn't. It relied on continual expansion and
| devolved from a republic into an empire along the way. When
| the empire couldn't expand anymore, it collapsed and
| fragmented.
|
| I also don't think their technology level was stable. IMO,
| they were only about 200 years away from developing a useful
| steam engine and kicking off their own industrial revolution.
| They knew the principals, they even had toy steam engines.
| They were already using both water wheels and windmills to do
| work when available. They were just missing precision
| manufacturing techniques to make a steam engine that actually
| did useful work.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| > They were just missing precision manufacturing techniques
| to make a steam engine that actually did useful work.
|
| That's the point. They had _sustainable and clean_
| technology. It was a sweet spot.
| phire wrote:
| They were mining coal and using it for both heating and
| metal working.
|
| They also deforested large sections of Europe for fuel
| (especially to make charcoal for smelting iron), building
| materials and to clear land for crops. They didn't really
| practice much in the way of sustainable forests, unless
| they ran into local shortages of fuel wood.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Aside from the, you know, literal slave labor required to
| power things, they also burnt down most of the trees
| within reach of the cities.
| breischl wrote:
| They also mined by tearing apart mountains, and threw
| noticeable amounts of lead into the air doing it.
|
| > Roman-era mining activities increased atmospheric lead
| concentrations by at least a factor of 10, polluting air
| over Europe more heavily and for longer than previously
| thought, according to a new analysis of ice cores taken
| from glaciers on France's Mont Blanc.
|
| A lot less than modern technology manages, but a lot more
| than nothing. And that with a much smaller population.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2019-05-roman-polluted-european-
| air-he... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruina_montium
| vkou wrote:
| Given that their society only functioned through massive
| amounts of theft from their neigbhours and slave labor, that
| would be very unfortunate if true.
| hollerith wrote:
| Did the ancient Romans have transparent paper, celluloid or
| cellophane?
|
| Just curious whether I'm missing some connection.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I'd take modern healthcare tbh
| 90s_dev wrote:
| Meh, a longer life isn't necessarily a happier one.
| cloudbonsai wrote:
| Here is the original paper from the researchers:
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads2426
|
| Apparently they wanted to create a material that:
|
| 1. is transparent,
|
| 2. can be made thick enough,
|
| 3. and is purely cellulose-based.
|
| Cellophane meets 1 and 3 but is hard to be made thick. Paper
| satisfies 2 and 3 but is not transparent. Celluroid is not
| explicitly mentioned in the paper, but I gather it does not
| satisfy 3 since it's hardly pure-cellulose.
|
| The main application target seems to be food packaging.
| teleforce wrote:
| Great summary of paper akin of TL;DR.
|
| If only AI/LLM can summarize most research papers like this
| correctly and intuitively I think most people will pay good
| money for it, I know I would.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| The Wall Street Journal recently started putting a
| 3-bullet-point AI generated summary at the top of each
| story.
| phire wrote:
| We do have translucent paper. It's nowhere near transparent,
| but translucent enough to give you some idea about what's
| inside. I've seen it used in the packaging for a few products
| at my local supermarket.
|
| I think it's Glassine?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassine
| iancmceachern wrote:
| There are also transparent rolling papers
| euroderf wrote:
| Glassine has been around forever. Useful for philately!
| albert_e wrote:
| Is this the paper, i wonder, that was used in old physical
| photo albums. Every alternate leaf was a translucent / see-
| through paper that would protect the photo print's surface
| and ink from getting fused to the previous page.
| cbmuser wrote:
| But Cellophane is already used for food packaging.
| kazinator wrote:
| A decently transparent (for the purposes) cellolose-based
| material is a wet cotton T-shirt.
| kazinator wrote:
| Celluloid (nitrated cellulose with camphor) is not the only
| transformation of cellulose into a plastic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate dates back to
| the 19th century; tough enough to be used for films and
| eyeglass frames.
|
| Production involves some chems: _" cellulose [pulp] is
| reacted with acetic acid and acetic anhydride in the presence
| of sulfuric acid."_
|
| Acetic anhydride is restricted in some countries because it's
| used in making heroin.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Huh, I somehow never made the connection to cellophane being
| cellulose-based. I just thought it was plastic...
| scythe wrote:
| The viscose process used to produce cellophane is highly toxic.
| The lyocell process is safer because the chemicals used are
| less volatile. But both require a lot of fine chemicals (carbon
| disulfide or N-methylmorpholine oxide or, recently,
| 1,5-diazabicyclo[4.3.0]non-5-enium acetate). This is why
| cellophane is typically used in small amounts and rayon
| likewise.
|
| By contrast, lithium bromide is a stable salt and is basically
| as cheap as the elements used to produce it, so it can be
| easily scaled up and recycled.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| hits all the marks for replacing plastic. curious how long it'll
| take before widespread adoption; my cynical assumption's that
| it'll be at least a decade. will be happy to be wrong ...
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| even if its viable, it would come down to cost
| Affric wrote:
| Progressively banning plastics from various applications
| would certainly help.
| slt2021 wrote:
| the cost can be managed by taxing bad plastic and providing
| incentives to good sustainable plastic, just like BEVs vs ICE
| pupppet wrote:
| It's funny how we've all just become desensitized to the idea
| that some countries simply dump their garbage in the ocean and
| rather than work on that problem, we work on creating better
| garbage.
| lisper wrote:
| Environmentally-sensitive garbage disposal is expensive. Not
| everyone can afford it.
| iszomer wrote:
| IIRC, SK burns spent tires as a fuel source for their cement
| industry.
| hippari2 wrote:
| It is easier to process a single type trash. Home trash is
| where burning get pretty expensive because people put all
| sort of stuffs in there. And I am sure the energy is net
| negative to.
|
| The main issue of trash has always been separation.
| iszomer wrote:
| Which also iirc Japan does very well. Sure, the power
| generated is connected to it's grid and it pales in
| comparison to their other forms of energy production but
| it is also a part of their waste management policy.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic...
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Its really hard to change people without using threats or
| force. Easier to change their environment.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Its really hard to change people without using threats or
| force.
|
| People change all the time. We are much different than ~10
| years ago, before the rise of the far-right in the West. We
| are much different than 100 years ago.
|
| People get much more exercise, eat healthier, are better
| educated ... so much as changed. Another new thing is people
| love to embrace nihilism rather than hope and progress -
| almost nobody embraces the latter these days.
| jmknoll wrote:
| What makes you think that people eat healthier and get more
| exercise?
|
| In the US at least, Obesity is on the rise, people eat more
| meat than ever before, and life expectancy is basically
| flat over the past decade.
| mmooss wrote:
| And they smoke a lot less. Of course it depends on your
| starting point, but compared to all of human history
| before 50 years ago, the trend is clear.
| jibal wrote:
| "People changing" and "changing people" are radically
| different things.
| mmooss wrote:
| Yes; many of those things influence people to change. The
| military also strongly influences people to change. In
| fact, any group you are in - work, school, friends, HN -
| changes you.
| james_marks wrote:
| There are people working that angle as well[0], and they focus
| on prevention for this reason. We need all angles.
|
| [0] https://theoceancleanup.com/
| junon wrote:
| The Ocean Cleanup is probably the most impressive and
| inspiring humanitarian / climate endeavor around right now.
| Been following them for a long time, their PR is really good.
| Actually showing the places before and after, showing the
| trash they take out, explaining how the tech works, being
| transparent about the struggles and whatnot. Really, really
| well orchestrated, I always feel a spark of hope after I see
| something from them.
| fooker wrote:
| > some countries simply dump their garbage in the ocean
|
| And most other countries dump their garbage in these less
| fortunate countries for 'recycling'.
|
| Can't really get mad at poor third world countries we have been
| using as dumpsters.
|
| If you don't believe me or think this is hyperbole, no I'm
| being literal here. Almost everything you sort out into a
| recycling bin gets dumped in the the ocean somewhere far from
| you.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/31/waste-co...
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/03/rich-countri...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-pla...
|
| https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/industrialised-countries-are...
| cantrevealname wrote:
| > _Almost everything you sort out into a recycling bin gets
| dumped in the ocean_
|
| But the articles don't say that. They say that a lot of
| plastic is unsuitable for recycling and is therefore
| incinerated or dumped, like into a landfill or a big dirty
| pile of trash on the ground. Not one of the articles said
| that the plastic was being dumped _into the ocean_.
|
| One of the articles makes an observation about beaches and
| ocean around one Cambodian recycling town covered with
| plastic trash. Certainly a careless and dirty operation
| there. But even that article doesn't claim that their modus
| operandi is to dump it into the ocean.
|
| If those journalists had any evidence that ocean dumping was
| the goal, or even if they suspected it, then that would have
| been the highlight of the article and they would have said so
| explicitly. It would be a newsworthy scoop even.
| samlinnfer wrote:
| It's not about recycling, their regular garbage goes into the
| ocean too (after they dump it into their rivers).
| brookst wrote:
| It's usually easier to solve a technical problem than a
| societal one.
| petesergeant wrote:
| "some countries" is doing a lot of heavy work to say "basically
| the Philippines", which is a gigantic outlier in output per
| capita and just also absolute volume. China and India produce
| quite a bit, but not compared to how many humans they have.
| jibal wrote:
| This is about dealing with reality.
| JBlue42 wrote:
| Not a surprise given how everything in Japan is wrapped in
| plastic. Loved everything about visiting the place that was far
| ahead of the US except for this.
| zdw wrote:
| Apparently the total mass of plastic used in wrapping the same
| volume of goods is lower in japan than in other countries
| (using more bags, less hard shell packaging).
|
| Video on this, as well as how much is used as incinerator fuel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU6WogV6UEg
| Tor3 wrote:
| In Japan individual crackers are typically wrapped in plastic
| inside the package, possibly due to the high humidity,
| possibly for social reasons (or both). Gift packets of for
| example chocolate also always use individually packed pieces.
| In the grocery store, if you buy plastic-wrapped on-styrofoam
| fish or meat and some other foodstuff, the cashier will
| always put this in an additional plastic bag. Eggs are packed
| in plastic (in my home country that would be cardboard). And
| so on and so forth. We bring our own bags,typically, but
| there's just so much plastic..
| jona777than wrote:
| On a more humorous note, this ought to make for an interesting
| store checkout experience. "Would you like paper or... paper?"
| speedylight wrote:
| We need a new class of materials that have plastic like
| properties but don't take thousands of years to degrade or are
| impossible to recycle.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I think that degradation of plastic is the larger concern.
| Storage of garbage is generally an overstated concern, while
| microplastic pollution clearly show the threat of plastics that
| break into millions of tiny pieces.[1] Stable plastics that
| last pose so many fewer problems when it comes to pollutants.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| We need it to break down properly, or not at all.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Only inorganic materials will last forever. We can reuse
| metal and glass and ceramic forever but never a plastic.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| It would be incredible if they could make plastic that didn't
| break down. But given the history of plastics, I would have
| to be very convinced that whatever they do to it isn't making
| it terribly toxic in ways that we don't measure. I would
| rather ditch plastics for better materials than have to check
| that yet another new acronym isn't in my water bottle.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It's keeping it out of the air and water that we need to work
| on. If we properly trashed our plastic, it would not be
| floating in the ocean.
| stavros wrote:
| But then your bottles would fall apart on the shelf because
| they degraded enough to get a hole in them.
| malux85 wrote:
| Surely there's a gap that could be the sweet spot between
| "thousands of years" and a couple of years
| deadbabe wrote:
| The problem is any idiot can make a bottle that lasts
| thousands of years. It takes an engineer to make a bottle
| that barely lasts a year.
| lodovic wrote:
| A milk carton?
| justsid wrote:
| Most tetra pak like materials and even aluminum cans are
| actually lined with plastic. Plastic is the greatest
| material ever, right until it needs to be disposed and
| then suddenly the biggest upside becomes the biggest
| downside.
| stavros wrote:
| Unfortunately, I think it's that either there's a
| microorganism that will eat your material, and you get a
| couple of years, or there's not, and you get thousands.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Wood, cardboards, and papers. Unfortunately, they are not
| as easily shaped and more expensive to make. Figure out how
| you can mass produce an iPhone, including all the PCBs, out
| of wood and paper and you will become a billionaire.
| jjulius wrote:
| Oh well, at least the planet and its inhabitants would likely
| be better off.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Sure, but talk to anyone about paper straws and you will
| probably see the issue with this.
| junon wrote:
| I'll take slightly annoying plastic straw over millions
| of particles of plastic poisoning me, any day of the
| week.
| jjulius wrote:
| What, that we're collectively unable to deal with
| relatively minor and innocuous inconveniences for the
| sake of the planet (setting aside whether or not straws
| are actually a huge deal)?
|
| That in spite of all the progress humans have made, we're
| somehow unable just take the lid off and drink out of a
| cup without pitching a fit?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Eh, I think we just overshot our goals by 100x. We could settle
| on a plastic that degrades into harmless dust after 10 years,
| but no less (nor anymore than 100). That's good enough to keep
| going with all of it.
| ExMachina73 wrote:
| Still holding out for transparent aluminum.
| jarretc wrote:
| So like sapphire (Al2O3) :)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "The paper sheets become transparent because they are packed
| tightly with nanometer-scale (one 1-billionth of a meter) fibers.
| The concentration of these fibers allows light to pass straight
| through the sheets without experiencing diffusion."
|
| How do they orient them?
| fastball wrote:
| Transparency isn't the reason we use so much plastic. We like
| plastic because it is lightweight and _not_ biodegradable. We
| like it because it lasts thousands of years. Because if it lasts
| thousands of years it will do a good job of storing your food
| products. Or it will stick around in various components without
| needing to worry about rain and such.
|
| What we need to develop is something that doesn't degrade _at
| all_ under most human living conditions, but does degrade rapidly
| if we expose it to some sort of not-common trigger, whether that
| is another chemical or temperature or pressure or whatever.
| mjevans wrote:
| Plastic likes: 'waterproof' (fluid proof for
| many things) Difficult to shatter (drop safe-ish)
| Shows stuff off 'nicely'
|
| Priced inexpensively (damage to the commons is not factored
| in...)
| verelo wrote:
| It's almost like we just gave up on making glass less
| breakable when we found plastic
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I'm haunted by a story I read once, about East German beer
| glasses that were _unbreakable_. They developed them
| because of a serious shortage of raw materials as I recall.
| I would be happy to buy two dozen and pass them on to my
| family when I die. But that 's the problem, isn't it? The
| _lack of sales_. Just ask Pyrex, I guess?
| bnc319 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41173177
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Aha! I'd forgotten where I'd read it, but it makes sense
| it was here. Thank you!
| nine_k wrote:
| A plastic bottle is not just less breakable. It's also way
| lighter weight than glass, and harder to dent and pierce
| than aluminum.
| cma wrote:
| Also needs to be robust to salt and acid, aluminum cans
| have a plastic lining.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Part of the reason that a lot of drinks in aluminium have
| short shelf life. Acidity eventually makes aluminium leak
| into the drink.
| saagarjha wrote:
| On a very long timeline, sure
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| More importantly, and unlike glass, if you do break
| plastic, it's not dangerous.
| fastball wrote:
| Yep, plastic has a lot of benefits. But I genuinely don't
| think the translucency is that much of a selling point. If
| plastic _could not be_ translucent and was always opaque, I
| think we would still use it for almost all of the same use-
| cases as we do today, on the back of durability + weight
| alone.
| masklinn wrote:
| > If plastic could not be translucent and was always
| opaque, I think we would still use it for almost all of the
| same use-cases as we do today, on the back of durability +
| weight alone.
|
| - any sort of housing window and display protection, I have
| at least half a dozen within easy reach not including
| actual computer displays
|
| - transparent food packaging is important to both identify
| the product and ascertain its state (especially at the
| store e.g. berries)
|
| - viewing liquid levels at a glance is extremely useful
| MyPasswordSucks wrote:
| We also use it because it's super-easy to mold, and is
| incredibly suited to mass production. The ease with which it
| can be shaped might even be the single most compelling reason
| to go plastic.
|
| Plastic takes the best aspects of wood (lightweight, cheap),
| ceramics (easy to shape, watertight), and metal (casual
| resiliency); and dodges some of the biggest issues with each
| (wood requires a lot of finishing and is very slow to shape
| industrially, ceramics tend to shatter, metal is comparatively
| expensive, prone to rust, and also electrically conductive).
| They're not perfect, but if you add up the stat points it's
| obvious why they're so prevalent.
| dpacmittal wrote:
| Let's not forget it's strength to weight ratio and how
| incredibly cheap it is. A polythene bag having few grams of
| weight can easily carry a load of 5kg or more while costing
| only a few cents.
| smolder wrote:
| What's clear to me, at least, is that a few cents doesn't
| represent the actual cost. It's a shortcoming of our
| economics that we consider such a great and long lasting
| material so disposable.
| grufkork wrote:
| I like to put it as all the damage we're causing is just
| taking out a huge loan, and either we repay it on our own
| terms or mother nature is going to debt collect for us...
| ozim wrote:
| I think few cents do represent it. Production alone per
| piece is more like really small fraction of a cent.
| pineaux wrote:
| Came here to say this. The production of a plastic bag
| costs somewhere in the range of 0.05 cents to produce. If
| you would factor in the impact on the environment it
| would probably cost a few cents. Which, given the insane
| amount of plastic bags that are consumed each day. Would
| be significant.
| Ray20 wrote:
| I think still less than a cent. I mean you just put
| plastic bag in a garbage pile, and that's it. Near-zero
| utilization costs with near-zero impact on the
| environment.
| jplrssn wrote:
| If it were that easy there wouldn't be a garbage patch
| the size of Texas floating in the Pacific.
| Ray20 wrote:
| Putting your trash in a local garbage dump is EASIER and
| CHEAPER than putting it in the garbage patch in the
| Pacific, so stop doing that right now.
| zulu-inuoe wrote:
| Incorrect. If I throw my plastic bags out on the road
| it's much easier. It'll find its way to the Pacific
| eventually
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That consists to a great extent of maritime generated
| garbage - plastic fishing nets and plastic thrown off of
| vessels, and of course lots of "recycled" plastic that
| was being shipped to China and ended up dumped in the
| middle of the ocean.
| algorias wrote:
| This is a problem with the (lack of) environmental laws
| in many countries. All things considered, landfills are
| really cheap.
| lmpdev wrote:
| This is probably the most important comment ITT
|
| The tricky part is how do we even _begin_ to model that
| with a somewhat comprehensible parameter? Without near
| perfect traceability across all nations in the world, we
| can only use sledgehammer methods like a "plastic tax" -
| which you'll find very difficult to pass outside of more
| developed jurisdictions like the EU
| yread wrote:
| Collecting, sorting and burning is not that expensive
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Burning is much worse than burying plastic - as it
| releases much of its mass as CO2 and other greenhouse
| gasses, and likely other pollutants as well.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| For CO2 purposes it's no different than burning oil. You
| can burn trash to generate electricity too.
|
| At 5 grams per bag it's also hard to get any real volume
| of the emissions.
|
| One of my pet theories is that we vastly overestimate the
| environmentally impact of things we personally touch.
| People lose sleep over their single use Starbucks cups,
| while things _many_ orders of magnitude worse happen out
| of sight.
| ddoeth wrote:
| In 2021 there were 51 Million tons of plastic waste
| produced in the US [0], which is about 150kg per person.
|
| Burning that is creating between 264 and 750kg of CO2 per
| person and year, definitely not insignificant.
|
| I'm not saying that big corporations are not responsible
| for a huge chunk of the emissions, but getting away from
| using so much plastic is not hurting.
|
| [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1339439/plastic-
| waste-ma...
| Tronno wrote:
| How can burning 150 kg of mass create 750 kg of mass?
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Burning takes oxygen from the air so it makes sense that
| the released mass would be higher. Every 12g of C is tied
| to 32g of O to get CO2. However I would expect the number
| to be around 500kg (quick calculation) max.
| jmb99 wrote:
| The oxygen is not contained in the 150kg of plastic, it's
| pulled out of the atmosphere. You're actually "burning"
| substantially more than 150kg if you include all the
| reactants.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I don't doubt your numbers, but we are (or at least I am)
| talking about plastic _bags_.
|
| I would guess they are less than 1 of those 150kg/year.
|
| > _Burning that is creating between 264 and 750kg of CO2
| per person and year, definitely not insignificant._
|
| Grok says total US CO2 emissions are "approximately 13.83
| metric tons per person". I agree that 750kg (0.75 ton) is
| significant, but I don't thing plastic bags even affect
| the last decimal of that number.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I'm just saying that plastic waste shouldn't be burned,
| regardless of how much or little we produce.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't disagree with anything on this chain but I think
| things like hypothetical miles deep landfill can't be
| worse than burning, it'll stay there for million years
| and the next iteration of life to do the same discussion
| as being done here.
| nick__m wrote:
| Incomplete combustion is much worse, no question there.
| But burning in facility design for that is really clean.
|
| Climate change won't destroy life on earth, the very
| worst case according to the IPCC is a billion death by
| 2099 but nature won't care. Sure some species will
| disappears but looking at bikini atol, 40 to 50 years
| after the disaster the remaining one will fill back the
| newly open ecological niche and the intense genetic
| pressure will assure that they will eventually diversify.
|
| Since we don't know about the effects microplastics
| accumulation long term effect, the worst case is that at
| that there exists some threshold that make higher life
| form impossible, maybe that threshold doesn't exist but
| maybe it does. Since humanity won't stop using something
| so usefull, without plastic millions of peoples would die
| every year from cause like food poisoning and lack of
| medical advanced medical care, so cleanly burning the
| plastic is the ethical choice. As grim as it sounds
| preventing the possible death of everything is better
| than preventing a billion death.
|
| And note that I don't suggest that we ignore the 3R, we
| should still reduce and re-use the plastic and recycle
| the kind that are truly recyclable but between the
| landfill and energy producing plastic incinerator, the
| ethical chois is clear.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I didn't say destroy life, I said destroy our
| civilization. With current global warmig trends,
| countries like Bangladesh will be rendered virtually
| uninhabitable by the end of century, leading to gigantic
| mass migrations that will likely lead to wars and other
| issues.
| infogulch wrote:
| Burn it with plasma gasification to reduce it to the
| simple molecules to eliminate all the pollutants. CO2 is
| a much smaller and easier to manage problem than plastic
| waste.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| We produce uncountable billions of plastic bags. What
| specifically is the huge cost?
| ben_w wrote:
| Environmental. Those billions of not degrading bags end
| up in places that harm the ecosystem.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think they overwhelmingly end up in landfills, where
| they have no material effect on any ecosystem.
|
| I'm no chemist, but they don't really react chemically
| with anything in nature, as I understand it.
|
| I know it feels dirty and unnatural that they just lie
| there, but in practical terms I don't think they do any
| substantial harm.
| hollerith wrote:
| Most plastic breaks down into microscopic pieces, which
| get everywhere including in the human brain in alarming
| amounts. They get into the human body through food and
| water.
|
| You haven't seen any reports about this? "Microplastics"
| does not ring any bells?
|
| >[plastic bags] don't really react chemically with
| anything in nature
|
| Almost no one denies that "forever chemicals" are toxic
| to humans even in tiny concentrations even though they
| are very much chemically inert. By "forever chemicals" I
| refer to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) (used
| in the production of Teflon, Gore-Tex, etc) or more
| precisely the chemically-stable compounds into which they
| break down. Just like forever chemicals, microplastics
| bioaccumulate.
| card_zero wrote:
| By what mechanism are PFAs harmful to health? Is it
| because they are not, in fact, chemically inert? Or else
| how.
| ben_w wrote:
| Nothing made of atoms is _truly_ chemically inert, not
| even noble gases. It 's just more or less reactive, and
| when/how.
|
| But even if it was literally un-reactive, sometimes it's
| enough to just be in the way. Imagine folding a protein,
| or assembling a structure of RNA origami*, but some big
| lump of un-reactive molecule is in the middle -- the
| ultimate shape is different, leading to different
| biochemical results. Grit in the gears.
|
| Or even just heavy: deuterium is chemically identical to
| hydrogen, but still has a lethal concentration** because
| it is twice the mass.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_origami
|
| ** Replacing 50% of the hydrogen in a multicellular
| organism with deuterium is generally lethal, unless this
| is a widely believed myth that's about to get a bunch of
| debunking
| ben_w wrote:
| "Overwhelmingly" may be correct everywhere, or it may be
| limited to just developed nations -- I visited Nairobi a
| decade ago, and that city varies wildly from "this is
| very nice" to "this slum appears to have been built on a
| landfill and the ground is accidentally paved with
| plastic that was repeatedly trodden into the dirt".
|
| However, even in developed nations, the quantity is large
| enough that the remainder is an observable issue: around
| the same time as my visit to Nairobi, 10 years ago, the
| UK introduced a minimum price for plastic bags (then 5p,
| increased in 2021 to 10p), to reduce bag usage, because
| it's just so easy to just not care enough about free
| things to make sure they end up in landfill (or
| recycling):
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/single-use-
| plasti...
| andrepd wrote:
| Well the thing is that it does not cost a few cents. It
| costs a few cents to make and (say) 20x that to dispose of
| properly. Since the user only has to pay part (the smaller
| part) of it, then it looks cheap.
| bell-cot wrote:
| That depends on the definition of "properly" - which is
| mostly a social thing.
|
| If we were pragmatic and competent enough to send
| cleanly-burnable household waste to (say) power plants
| designed for that, there wouldn't be much of an issue.
| It's the stupid litterbugs and performative-virtue
| "recycling" lobby who really drive up the disposal cost.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Note that burning plastic is one of the worse things you
| could do with it - probably even worse then it ending up
| in the ocean. Global warming is the single biggest threat
| to our current civilization, and, for all its faults,
| plastic traps carbon. Burning it releases it back in the
| atmosphere, where it does far more damage then if you
| just bury it.
| bell-cot wrote:
| In a world where one 787 (full of tourists?) burns 5 tons
| of fuel per hour, and one big container ship (full of
| stuff outsourced to where labor is cheap and
| environmental regulations are pretend?) burns 120 tons of
| fuel per day, I'd figure that "but plastic traps carbon"
| is 99.997% performative pretend environmentalism.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The goal is to reach net 0 carbon emissions. We can at
| least theoretically power some of these things with
| renewable electricity. We can't replace plastic with any
| otheratetial in many uses - so finding a way to dispose
| of plastic waste while staying at net 0 emissions (if we
| ever get there) is going to mean that burning it is not a
| solution.
| bell-cot wrote:
| The goal is get every last drop of unwanted water out of
| the _Titanic_. We can at least theoretically spread heavy
| canvas over some the huge gash in the bow, so you are
| focusing on a leaky water cooler in the stern.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, I'm just saying that we shouldn't start taking
| buckets and pouring _more_ water in. The default behavior
| is to store garbage in landfills. Let 's leave it like
| that, rather than burning it to produce even more CO2.
| Ray20 wrote:
| Disposing not cost that much. Plastic disposing is
| CHEAPER than it's production.
| card_zero wrote:
| > super-easy to mold
|
| Or "plastic".
| Gigachad wrote:
| There's quite a lot of packaging that's mostly cardboard but
| with a transparent plastic window to see the product.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| THere's a lot of single use plastics for packaging that
| something like this could replace. Like buying prepacked fruit.
| Your fruit isn't lasting thousands of years. So your packaging
| doesn't need to either.
| fastball wrote:
| The plastic doesn't need to last for thousands of years for
| our actual use, but the properties that make it last for
| thousands of years are also what make it desirable for our
| use: fully waterproof, impermeability to microbes, etc.
| jibal wrote:
| You're just repeating yourself, while ignoring that your
| sweeping generalization has already been refuted.
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think so. I was clarifying my point which seemed
| misunderstood by 2muchcoffeeman and didn't contain much
| of a sweeping generalization (more a statement of fact
| about the nature of plastic).
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Yeah but lasting a thousand years isn't necessary for those
| properties. It's not even the case that all those
| properties are necessary for all actual cases of their use.
| fastball wrote:
| Which material has all the useful properties of plastic
| and doesn't last for an inconvenient amount of time?
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| There are many uses of plastic that can be easily
| replaced with cornstarch, bamboo, or leaves. Food
| packaging can be with aluminum or glass, granted those
| last thousands of years too but the point is they're more
| easily recyclable and we can make a circular economy
| around them.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Those don't work in Tokyo during summers. 40C/104F
| ambient temp, all-day 100% RH, optional salt in the wind,
| the every populated areas of the country is basically a
| bioreactor. We just haven't found such materials that can
| make distinction between just waiting at a crosswalk in
| Tokyo and being in a bacterial composting chamber.
|
| I mean, the simplest solution to this problem might be to
| leave that borderline uninhabitable hellhole and move to
| Europe where food in bamboo wraps or home-washed glass
| containers don't start stringing in matters of hours, but
| that's not an option for most.
|
| Also, you might be thinking that some of those wrap
| materials were historically viable, but it has to be
| noted that the content inside were much less healthier
| than it is now. Medieval Japanese people were estimated
| to have taken as much as 50g/day/person of salt, which is
| literally 10x WHO recommendations, or like 1.5 cups per
| week, or one small backpack worth per year. Adding that
| much of salt to food is no different from marinading it
| in chemical preservatives, only much worse.
| benrutter wrote:
| I think the answer to this question (with emphasis on
| "all") is clearly none that we know of. Plastic is really
| hundreds of different polymers, each with different
| priperties and uses.
|
| If a new material can take the place of some of those,
| that's a win. We don't need to replace plastic wholesale
| with a single new thing, there's no rule against using
| multiple targeted materials, we've just got used to
| material science being all about one material for recent
| history.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > but lasting a thousand years isn't necessary for those
| properties
|
| Yes, it is. Lasting for thousands of years is the same
| thing as (1) impermeability to microbes (mold / insects /
| etc...) plus (2) failure to react with local chemicals.
| Those two things are the things we want, and if you have
| them both, you last for thousands of years, because
| there's nothing to stop you from doing that.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Correlation is still not causation, so since pollution is
| a real problem we need to keep researching alternatives
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Correlation is still not causation
|
| Um, a stitch in time saves nine.
|
| Are you just typing random words?
| ghushn3 wrote:
| Nobody likes plastic because it lasts "thousands of years".
| People care about storing food products well. If we can do that
| _without_ lasting thousands of years that seems like a pretty
| good win.
| fastball wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44207115
| cbmuser wrote:
| Have you ever heard of Cellophane?
| namibj wrote:
| Aka rayon (but foil not fiber).
| constantcrying wrote:
| Good at storing food products and lasting thousands of years
| are very closely related.
|
| The problem with plastic also isn't that it can last
| thousands of years, glass also has that property, to an even
| greater degree.
|
| The problem with plastics isn't that it won't degrade on its
| own. It is that you can't really do anything with it after it
| has been disposed, recycling of glass is simple, recycling of
| plastics is very difficult as it degrades the material
| properties.
| Ray20 wrote:
| The problem with plastic is not that nothing can be done
| with it after disposal, the problem with plastic is that it
| harms the environment during use.
|
| There is no problem with the fact that a plastic bag does
| not deteriorate for thousands of years after use: you just
| throw it in the trash, and it lies in a pile of garbage for
| thousands of years, absolutely harmless and with a near-
| zero impact on the environment (because the areas of
| garbage dumps are tiny both relative to the environment and
| relative to other human impacts on the environment)
|
| Propaganda about the harm of plastic bags is designed for
| complete idiots, whose idiocy borders on a clinical
| diagnosis.
|
| The real problem is with other products of plastic, which
| break down while in use, polluting the water and air with
| microparticles.
|
| Car tires, synthetic fabrics, paints and paint coatings and
| various exterior finishes, sidings and so on. All of this,
| even with the slightest wear, whether from mechanics or
| ultraviolet radiation, pollutes the environment throughout
| the entire use.
|
| Against this problem, plastic bags are completely harmless
| even if we start using them ten times more and throwing
| them away ten times more often. And this problem cannot be
| solved by changing the method of disposal or recycling.
| Only by stopping the use.
|
| The fight against plastic bags and all this stuff about
| recycling plastic is literally a joke how drunk man
| searching for something under the streetlight that he lost
| somewhere else in the park. Only he searches for it at
| someone else's expense, actively spending the allocated
| funds on alcohol and large-scale media projects on the need
| and importance of the search under the streetlight
| bccdee wrote:
| That's not entirely true. I throw away a _lot_ of cardboard
| packaging with a plastic window glued into it. Obviously this
| can 't replace all plastic, but it can certainly replace some.
|
| Plastics do a lot of things; no one material can replace them
| all. But this is certainly one meaningful niche of disposable
| plastics.
| paulmooreparks wrote:
| A use case is already stated in the article:
|
| "So far, paper packs have been the most common alternatives to
| plastic containers. But business experts have pointed out that
| consumers are less willing to buy goods in paper packs because
| they cannot see the contents. Transparent paper could overcome
| this problem, but bringing the material to market will require
| factories with the technology to mass-produce it."
| dyauspitr wrote:
| We would like it for the vast majority of cases if it lasted
| for _ten_ years (or 50) and not a thousand. Why don't we have
| plastic that degrades away safely over some timespan like that
| yet.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| > We like it because it lasts thousands of years.
|
| Wrong. People only care for packaging to last before the
| contents expire, but beyond the expiry date nobody cares about
| the next thousand years that the packaging will last. And they
| will very much care when they start suffering the health
| consequences of garbage and microplastics leaking into their
| drinking water.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Also something that doesn't slowly poison you over time like
| what plastics (microplastics) do with microplastics. There's
| almost no way to get rid of those from our body except
| breastfeeding, but in that case, it's actually even worse,
| since usually people don't breastfeed for fun.
| cbmuser wrote:
| No one was ever harmed by incorporating plastics. And id your
| body can't make any use if it, it will leave your body
| through the digestive system.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Sadly that's not the case:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819327/
|
| Etc... just google microplastics.
| cbmuser wrote:
| >>We like plastic because it is lightweight and not
| biodegradable.<<
|
| Depends on the type of plastic used.
|
| Cellophane is a plant-derived plastic that can be used for
| packaging and it's biodegradable.
| lucideer wrote:
| We use plastic for a wide range of reasons depending on the
| application & one of them is transparency. The alternative in
| the case tends to be glass which ticks a lot of your boxes
| (rain proof, etc.) but is heavy & brittle.
|
| It's not about finding a universal replacement, it's always
| going to be a multifaceted approach.
| _ink_ wrote:
| > What we need to develop is something that doesn't degrade at
| all under most human living conditions, but does degrade
| rapidly if we expose it to some sort of not-common trigger,
| whether that is another chemical or temperature or pressure or
| whatever.
|
| That requires that people care enough to collect that material
| in order to have it transported to the facility that can
| degrade it. The amount of plastic in the environment indicates
| that this is clearly not the case.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Over here in Latvia they established a deposit system where
| drinks cost more to buy at the store but you get that money
| back (store credit, or you can just donate it) when you bring
| the bottles/cans to a drop off point.
|
| I haven't really tossed away a bottle/can in years. I mean, I
| didn't really use to do that previously anyways, but now I
| don't even throw them into the regular trash, instead collect
| them in a separate bag.
|
| I'd say it's all about some sort of an incentive.
| diggan wrote:
| > Over here in Latvia they established a deposit system
| where drinks cost more to buy at the store but you get that
| money back (store credit, or you can just donate it) when
| you bring the bottles/cans to a drop off point.
|
| AKA "Container-deposit legislation" (or "Pant" as we call
| it in Sweden and maybe also Germany?). Seems to work very
| well, and you also have a ton of people collecting cans
| that others throw in the environment, as they'll get money
| for it.
|
| Kind of wish we had it here in Spain too, as the
| environment and the sea ends up with a lot of cans and
| glass bottles. Seems like such an obvious idea to have
| nationwide.
| raphman wrote:
| Yeah, in Germany pretty much all cans and bottles require
| a deposit (single-use plastic bottles: 0.25 EUR) and
| every shop selling cans/bottles with deposit is required
| to take them and similar bottles back.
|
| Most supermarkets have a reverse vending machine that
| take cans and bottles, crushes single-use ones, and
| returns a voucher for the deposit.
|
| Some videos of these machines in action (not sure whether
| there are people on HN who have never seen one):
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWqwu63eTPQ -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlfDavzHq7I -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozVpMDDawnw
| junon wrote:
| Pfand in Germany, yes.
| pineaux wrote:
| "Statiegeld" in the netherlands. It already exists for at
| least as long as I live.
| padjo wrote:
| Yep same scheme started in Ireland recently, just a
| transplant of the German system it seems. Some people
| complain but it has massively reduced waste and litter.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Ireland's had a tax on plastic shopping bags for years,
| which basically eliminated them as a form of litter. The
| bottle deposit scheme is doubly clever by making
| collected litter have an actual cash value, don't think
| it would have worked without that.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Also, in bigger cities(Oslo in my case), even if you throw
| empties in public trash cans, they get fished out by
| various types of poor people who walk around all day
| collecting them. Though I tend to leave them next to the
| trashcan as long as it's not too windy, just as a nice
| gesture to the less fortunate. Or, often you'll see one of
| them as you finish your drink and you just hand them the
| bottle. Of course, I'd prefer a society where people didn't
| need to do this to get their next fix or meal or whatever
| it is, but it is sort of neat that utrash sorting can just
| naturally emerge in a society once the trash is imbued with
| monetary value.
|
| One wonders why we don't do this with larger categories of
| garbage that needs to be sorted. I suppose bottles and cans
| are fairly easy to semi-automate given their fairly
| standardised shapes. But that just feels like an
| implementation detail.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| In the poorer districts of Ho Chi Minh City, like Q4, Go
| Vap, etc, it is similar yet different. Each evening,
| folks set their garbage bags directly on the curb. At
| night, other people rip open the bags and scatter the
| trash in the street looking for anything salvageable.
| Finally, around midnight, city employees walk the streets
| pushing wheeled bins and sweep up the trash. When it
| rains, the trash is carried to clog drains, causing
| large-scale flooding.
|
| Not a great system for many reasons, not least of which
| is relying on truly poor people. But they are remarkably
| efficient at extracting value from the waste stream.
|
| Automated recyclable separation is hard and fascinating.
| Magnets for ferrous metals. Something about non-ferrous
| metal and eddy currents for aluminum. Infrared cameras
| and mechanical arms to detect and separate types of
| plastics. Blower systems to extract paper. Tumblers with
| various sized holes (like those coin counting machines)
| for other separation. (Source: Not that great. I just
| watched a few Youtubes.)
| diggan wrote:
| > That requires that people care enough to collect that
| material in order to have it transported to the facility that
| can degrade it. The amount of plastic in the environment
| indicates that this is clearly not the case.
|
| Or that governments care enough to create laws and incentives
| for people to collect it.
|
| Besides, there are many places that don't have as much
| plastic as others in their environment, so clearly it's
| possible to avoid _in some way_. Have to figure out how and
| why, but I 'm guessing the researchers kind of feel like
| that's outside the scope of their research.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Singular "Plastic" doesn't exist, we use several hundreds of
| different plastics for many purpose, each of which having its
| own requirement (sometimes it's its lack of biodegradability,
| but sometimes it's its transparency, or its light weight, or
| its elasticity, etc.), each use case would need a totally
| different substitute.
|
| In all cases, though, a key feature is that it can be
| synthesized at massive scale for cheap, and it's the hardest
| part when looking for substitutes.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| There isn't one replacement for plastic. Hence also we can't
| expect every single replacement to address every single use of
| plastic. Transparent paper is fine.
| atoav wrote:
| Ideal would be a material that has all the properties, but
| biodegrades after a reasonable period (what is reasonable
| depends on the usecase of course).
| az09mugen wrote:
| You mean something like what Japanese scientists developed ? A
| sea-water dissolving plastic :
| https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/scient...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Until the last coal fired power plant is decommissioned, the
| rational way to "recycle" plastic is to burn it. There's you're
| "not common trigger:" the temperature in a coal furnace.
|
| Currently, plastic packaging is measured in the tens of
| millions of tons per year, while coal is measured in the
| billions of tons.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, burning it is not "rational", it is the very opposite. We
| talk so much of carbon sequestration, and then "rationally"
| try to release all of the already-sequestered carbon back in
| the atmosphere.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It won't make a significant difference compared to burning
| coal.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That's like nicking a vein while you have a arterial
| hemmohrage - sure, it won't make a big difference, but it
| also doesn't help in any way. We need to stop burning
| coal, oil, and methane - and replacing any of them with
| plastic would not be helpful in the least.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It's technically correct that it doesn't help with
| reducing CO2 emissions. But plastic recycling is a flop
| and a charade. Reducing use of plastic is going to be the
| only effective way to reduce the harm from plastic. But
| if we're up to our asses in plastic that's going into the
| environment in our bodies, burning it isn't a bad choice.
| hollerith wrote:
| If the plastic to be burned substitutes for coal or oil, it
| is carbon neutral. Isn't that what the Scandinavian
| countries do with their trash as an alternative to
| landfilling it?
|
| Not burning the plastic risks its turning into
| microplastics, which will tend to interfere with the
| physiology of all plants and animals.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's not carbon neutral, it still adds to the problem. We
| need to replace our carbon emitting power generation with
| renewable energy, not burn our trash to keep emitting the
| same. And trash can just be buried, it doesn't need to be
| burned.
|
| There's a lot of talk generally of running carbon
| sequestration technologies and how important that will
| be. Burying plastic waste is exactly doing that, without
| spending the extra power to actually extract the carbon
| from the air.
| dragontamer wrote:
| This is cellulose, which is for many practical purposes just
| paper.
|
| This sounds like something that'd be very cheap and flexible.
| I've drunk out of plenty of paper cups before.
|
| So maybe this is a transparent paper cup. Which is possibly
| useful somewhere.
| Animats wrote:
| The article is unclear on what this actually is. Pure
| cellulose? Cellulose acetate? Cellulose based plastics have
| been around for a century, but making them is apparently too
| expensive for packaging. [1] Is this new stuff cheaper to
| make?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
| jkestner wrote:
| We like plastic because it is lightweight and not
| biodegradable.
|
| Sometimes. Its plasticity of use means that we use it for for a
| lot of single-use products. The Clive Thompson Wired article
| I'm reading right now starts with "a plastic bag might be the
| most overengineered object in history." Of course, the problem
| is that it's optimized for cost sans externalities.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Reading the thread so far I feel everyone one is missing the
| biggest reason why plastic. Not to negate the technical uses
| and requirements mentioned especially yours, which are
| incredibly important...
|
| And of course that reason is economic.
|
| Plastic is essentially free, being a waste byproduct of
| petroleum extraction. Outside of the upfront infrastructure
| investment the feedstock is cost negligible. So pure profit
| once you're up and running. That the process is locked behind a
| knowledge wall, in that not just anyone is going to have the
| capitol and knowledge to execute, which limits the competitive
| landscape. So low risk high reward, which just gets investors
| salivating. At this point we take plastics as a given. Plastics
| have been so successful that the glass ceiling has been reached
| and now we're all worried about the lifecycle costs.
|
| Regarding that lifecycle: I'm pro plastic. I romantically
| entertain recycling despite its lack luster performance and
| track record. At this point in time given the severity and
| perniciousness with the problems of disposal I feel the only
| prudent course of action is putting waste plastic back in the
| holes we get it out of. That this isn't done is a whole rabbit
| hole of legislation, economic incentives, technical hurdles,
| entrenched theological fallacies that persist culturally
| bringing us back to the ouroboros of legislation.
| NotAnOtter wrote:
| Exactly. The specific properties that make plastic useful in
| industry are the exact same properties that make it an
| ecological problem. You cannot realistically replace plastic
| without first accepting an inferior product, trying to make an
| equally good product will lead you to a new ecologically
| problematic product.
|
| People think plastic is bad because it comes from oil, that's
| not the case. Plastic and the oil it comes from is a biproduct
| of the primary reason we drill for oil - which is energy. The
| generation of plastic isn't the problem per se, it's the
| existence of it from then on. So if you find some new zero
| emission way of making a plastic substitute that has all the
| same problems of plastic, you haven't really done anything.
|
| The solution to plastic is a change in consumer spending,
| probably facilitated by national regulation. So... good luck.
| codingdave wrote:
| > What we need to develop is something that doesn't degrade at
| all under most human living conditions, but does degrade
| rapidly if we expose it to some sort of not-common trigger,
| whether that is another chemical or temperature or pressure or
| whatever.
|
| Glass. You are talking about glass. It is re-usable and
| recycle-able. It just has the unfortunate property that if you
| break it, the resulting shards will slice people up pretty
| badly, so it is far less safe for transport logistics. Not to
| mention heavy.
| amelius wrote:
| There's a lot of food in plastic that will expire long before
| any plastic/paper will biodegrade.
|
| > What we need to develop is something that doesn't degrade at
| all under most human living conditions
|
| You mean like a "forever chemical"?
| bosky101 wrote:
| Kudos, about time, Exciting news.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Since this comes from Japan before trying to convert people to
| use transparent paper that has half the carbon footprint of
| plastic, why not reducing the massive packaging waste in Japan
| where everything is packed into 10 layers of plastic for no good
| reason?
| oddmiral wrote:
| In recent news: Japanese scientists produce plastic which
| dissolves in seawater within 2 hours.
| smolder wrote:
| Plastics and other oil-derivative, crucial materials should be
| the main use of crude oil and methane, not energy. Save the oil
| to make things that don't have an easy replacement. Replace oil
| burning with solar, wind, nuclear, etc., and use the underground
| reserve of hydrocarbons for noble causes like medecine, or for
| the type of investments that add to the net good for our species.
| smolder wrote:
| Transparent paper is kind of an old idea. Whether it is
| commercially viable is the important question.
| junon wrote:
| From TFA it says it's only about 3x as expensive as normal
| paper packaging, just needs a factory. Implies that at least
| some people believe it's viable.
| Huxley1 wrote:
| My mom's been helping out at a small local shop, and they've been
| trying to move away from plastic packaging. They tried
| compostable films and recycled paper, but either the cost was too
| high or the materials just didn't hold up well.
|
| This transparent paper made from cellulose sounds really
| promising. If it can handle heat, looks good, and actually breaks
| down in the environment, that would be a big help for shops like
| theirs.
|
| Has anyone here worked with this kind of material? I'd love to
| hear how it performs in real use, especially with things like
| liquids or anything sensitive to moisture.
| smolder wrote:
| I would like you to qualify "didn't hold up well". Can you
| explain how? Can we get more detail?
| wolfi1 wrote:
| I can't help it, sounds to me like cellophane.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane
| Leo-thorne wrote:
| My mom's been helping out at a small local shop, and they've been
| trying to move away from plastic packaging. They tried
| compostable films and recycled paper, but either the cost was too
| high or the materials just didn't hold up well.
|
| This transparent paper made from cellulose sounds really
| promising. If it can handle heat, looks good, and actually breaks
| down in the environment, that would be a big help for shops like
| theirs.
|
| Has anyone here worked with this kind of material? I'd love to
| hear how it performs in real use, especially with things like
| liquids or anything sensitive to moisture.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Even if it doesn't replace all use-cases for plastics, it seems
| like it can replace lots of throw-away plastic products. That
| alone would be good progress. I don't mind cellulose shopping
| bags, straws, throwaway cups, plates, utensils, etc.
| 7speter wrote:
| Wow, I was just wondering about this yesterday! I had read about
| how some researchers made a sort of glass out of wood and
| wondered if they could make resilient bottles for beverages out
| of a sort of maybe polymerized paper.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I don't remember how often I have seen basically this exact same
| story. "Material X is going to replace plastics" is not a new
| story.
|
| Every time they have failed to replace plastics, because it is
| extremely hard to match all of the great qualities of the common
| plastic varieties. Since plastics are so common people
| underestimate what a great materials they really are.
| yoko888 wrote:
| I used to reduce plastic mainly for environmental reasons now I
| find myself doing it for health too.
|
| The more I learn about microplastics and chemical leaching, the
| more I realize how much plastic interacts with our bodies, not
| just the planet. Especially when heat, oil, or acid are involved
| like in cooking or packaging hot foods it's hard not to think
| twice.
|
| I'm not saying we should panic, but I do think it's worth
| reframing: health and sustainability aren't separate concerns
| here. They're intertwined.
|
| Even if alternatives like "transparent paper" aren't perfect,
| they might still offer meaningful gains for both the environment
| and our bodies. And for many people, that might be what tips the
| scale.
| leereeves wrote:
| I'm concerned about microplastics too, but I think on the whole
| plastics have been good for health. Any harm microplastics may
| cause must be rather small if it hasn't been identified yet,
| and easily outweighed by the benefits of reducing spoilage and
| pathogen growth.
| NotAnOtter wrote:
| Low carbon emissions, but what about cost?
|
| This product seems to solve for a lot of things that have nothing
| to do with why we use plastic. Plastic is everywhere because it
| is durable & cheap, that's about it got 80% of applications. This
| misses the mark even more for the other 20% that cares about
| things like caustic resistance.
|
| An expensive non-durable product will never replace it. It's
| nonsensical to say it's as durable as plastic, I assume that's
| referring to tensile strength, which is not the main property
| industry cares about. They want a material that will keep their
| product protected for months or years, it being able to lift a
| similar amount of weight is irrelevant when you're wrapping
| bread.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Are plastics killing us? - by Ugo Bardi - The Seneca Effect
|
| https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/are-plastics-killing-us
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