Developed by researchers from China's Northeast Forestry University, the bamboo plastic can biodegrade in soil within 50 days and offers a pathway towards sustainable plastic alternatives.
I would recommend going and actually looking at a stack of paper cups. They are pretty much universally in a plastic bag.
Also, those cardboard (or even paper) boxes that printer paper come in? They get put in larger cardboard boxes and crates… which are generally wrapped in glorified plastic wrap before they get loaded into those metal trucks. And often stay wrapped on their pallets at the warehouse until they are set for their final destination.
And, to be clear: That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is effectively the idea behind electric cars. Move the pollution/recycling burden away from the end user and keep it at the distribution center/power plant where more expensive efforts can be done to reduce waste/pollution. And… much like with “clean coal”, the end result tends to be dumpsters full of plastic on their way to the landfill because recycling is effort.
But the idea is sound. Use the more robust polymers for shipping and long term protection. I just… still think 50 days is too little for anything even remotely close to an end user without a LOT of extra coatings (for example: Those paper milk cartons tend to have a LOT of wax… or polymers) which kind of defeat the purpose.
Sorry, you want to replace wooden pallets with hermetically sealed metal boxes? Maintenance costs go through the roof and it might be worth reading up on what they actually use to make those seals (hint: Polymer compounds). You also drastically increase the weight at every step AND add very significant logistics issues (can’t have crates too close to the door in case it is rainy). All of which translate to increased consumption of fossil fuels.
Again: We don’t overuse polymers because of wanting a summer home in northern Canada. Polymers are used because of their materials properties being… quite frankly insane. Super light material that can take a beating while providing strong water/weather resistance. Like… your “let’s put things in a metal box” is already solved by just wrapping some fairly cheap plastic wrap around things. Shipping a hundred plastic bottles uses MUCH less energy/fuel than shipping a hundred glass bottles for weight of the bottles alone. And the glass bottles need significantly more packaging/protection to survive shipping which drastically increases costs on top of that.
There is a LOT of room for improvement. EVERYONE hates paper straws but they are a really good idea that greatly reduces how much plastic ends up in a landfill. But people also rapidly realize that those paper straws need to be protected from creation to end use and… that is still going to be plastic. Optimally you are wrapping the box/stack instead of the individual straws so it is still a net gain, but… yeah.
And there is a LOT of work going in to making greener plastics. But when you engineer out the material properties that made you use it in the first place… it is a cool novelty and great for marketing but it doesn’t really change the amount of plastics used in getting that to the point where someone feels good because they are using biodegradable utensils.
It biodegrades in soil in 50 days. Don’t store it in damp, biologically active media and you should be good.
I’ve had a dried flower arrangement in my house for about a year. It’s fine. Slap that baby in the compost tumbler and it will be soil within a few weeks.
So don’t store liquid in it? Not viable for beverage containers.
And unless you are going to use a sturdier plastic to surround it (which actually is a very good model because it keeps the harder to recycle stuff out of homes)… tell me you never worked inventory without telling me you never worked inventory?
What percentage of single use plastic is used for storing liquids? I would imagine it’s a minority, with things like plastic bags making up the majority.
Plus very acidic liquids like soda may not be bio-active enough to cause this to break down, depending on what the process is.
What percentage of single use plastic is used for storing liquids? I would imagine it’s a minority, with things like plastic bags making up the majority.
Plastic bottles are the most common type of container for fluids and make up a huge portion of plastic waste. Drinks, cooking oil and vinegar, cosmetics, personal hygiene products, cleaning products, motor oil, paints, medical products… and that’s just the common consumer stuff. Plastic bags are a big part too but liquid bottles are certainly not a minority.
Plus very acidic liquids like soda may not be bio-active enough to cause this to break down, depending on what the process is.
You also have to be concerned about the outside of the container. Will it be washed as part of the production/handling process? Will sweat and bacteria from human hands cause it to start breaking down? It will be packed in a box for shipping, then unpacked at a store, then picked up and looked at by who knows how many people before being purchased, then it has to stay in one piece until the product it contains is used up. A bottle of toilet cleaner or shampoo or laundry detergent might be handled hundreds of times, and its lifespan from production to final disposal might be a year or more.
Which have massive implications on weight and structural packaging. A plastic soda bottle is light and sturdy. A glass soda bottle is heavy and shatters. Also recycling of glass is not entirely straightforward in a lot of regions.
The world doesn’t (over) rely on polymers just because everyone wants to have a summer home in Alberta. They have materials properties that make them ridiculously good for storage and packaging. They just have very serious implications on the environment.
Reducing those environmental implications is VERY good and a lot of work is going into it. But doing so to the point it removes their beneficial properties… is kind of missing the point.
Glass is heavy compared to plastic, and also bulkier. A truck full of product in glass containers will carry substantially less product volume than if it were plastic containers. In order to distribute the equivalent amount of product, more trucks will have to make more trips. When you scale this up to national distribution you’re talking about hundreds more trucks on the road, thousands more trips per year, which is going to have an environmental impact.
Glass is fragile compared to plastic. Some accounting is already done for product loss due to breakage during distribution, but plastic containers are fairly durable (part of the problem of course). If you switch to glass the loss percentage goes up, which again means you have to make more trips to distribute the same amount of product, so compounding the environmental impact.
No, you’re understanding this wrong. They don’t mean it will degrade on the shelf or in transit, only in soil. If true, this is the shit.
Additionally, the bamboo plastic can be degraded in soil within 50 days or closed-loop recycled (where objects are recycled and used to remake similar products) whilst retaining 90% of its original strength, demonstrating its potential as a sustainable but high-performing alternative to traditional plastic materials, according to details released by researchers.
Yeah, but soil is basically moisture and bacteria. Same as food, unless it is freeze-dried or so. Still, as alternative to paper straws or one-time cups it could be great.
Exactly and single use plastics are the largest problem we face. Medical and food handling would be much more difficult and expensive without single use plastics, so a good-enough plastic say for gloves that get changed really often would be a huge win.
Except for literally anything dry or single use. Packaging for screws, toys, electronics, medical material and also actual items themselves like straws, single use plates/cups/forks, etc.
I was looking at a crystal clear, water tight, biodegradable, algae-based plastic the other day. The problem is, well, that it is biodegradable. You can’t package food with it because it will grow mold and then lose its properties.
Possibly for situations where it stays dry it could be a great plastic, but that pretty much excludes all shipping and food use.
Yeah. I can’t actually think of an application for plastic where this makes sense, but there probably is one.
But this really feels like a proof of concept paper that hit mainstream news. But those tend to actually have very useful applications in niche corners (that are only sometimes weapons…) so cool.
Plastic grocery bags
Plastic single use gloves
Plastic straws
Packaging for electronics
Packaging for dry goods like beans/pasta
Packaging for short shelf life items like fruit/bread
Honestly, there’s a huge number of things we use plastic for that don’t require it to sit in contact with bacteria/liquid for weeks at a time. I’d be willing to bet it’s the majority even.
Like I said, it really depends upon what exactly triggers “biodegrading”. Because those plastic gloves might be in a box in a warehouse for months prior to getting to the hospital… and then another month in the supply closet.
That is WHY so many products have like five layers of packaging. Because maybe someone left the door open on a rainy day and some of those cardboard boxes got soggy. The plastic wrapping your pallet keeps it out and it is mostly the warehouse workers who suffer (and they’re barely people in the eyes of the law…).
is mostly the warehouse workers who suffer (and they’re barely people in the eyes of the law…).
As someone who works with warehouse material handlers (aka forklift operator with PPE) on a daily basis, I am pretty sure they are barely people in their own eyes too.
Medical supplies actually probably are a really good application for that. Traditional polymers to wrap the palette, cardboard to wrap the disposables, and then bamboo plastic to wrap the disposables themselves. Since those actually have fairly strict storage requirements once they get off the truck.
Just a question of if that is cost effective to have multiple types of plastic at the factory.
Most biodegradable polymers are water-permeable (water intrusion is how bacteria get inside the material to break it down). Anything water-permeable is not appropriate for medical use, even as a wrapper for something else, because you can’t guarantee that the thing inside is sterile.
Demand varies and there are a LOT of warehouses on the way from the cup factory to the starbucks. Cups can EASILY spend a month or three just sitting in a damp cardboard box at a distribution center. Which is “fine” because they have at least one or two more layers of outer packaging around the stack of venti iced coffee cups.
So they just test it to check if it’s fine or not fine? And then make changes accordingly?
Those “changes” are throwing out a significant part of your inventory and, if you have the money, ordering more. So the shipping and manufacturing costs for the same number of plastic cups (or whatever) becomes over 2x because you ALSO have the cost of taking the box of slop to the landfill.
I 100% agree change is necessary. But it is also worth thinking before making the change and deciding if it would actually save on “carbon”.
Well at least it’s biodegradable slop! My experience is it comes with instructions that are inevitably ignored and there’s some heavy sighing, eye rolling, shrugging and it’s put down as “short-term operational variance from sustainability transition” or something else that says “it won’t happen again, guv”
You’re right but because this is a politicized issue, you seem like you’re on the wrong side and therefore are wrong and evil. There is a lot of good work being done on biodegradables but 50 days is way too short of a timespan. If you put a piece of bamboo in the ground it’s not going to biodegrade in 50 days, for example. Most of the disposable plastic we use is on stuff that is wet, so I am incredibly skeptical about the utility of this.
50 days is borderline useless when you factor in logistics. At best you fundamentally can’t have a standing inventory.
Still, a step in the right direction
Paper degrades in about that much time, but we still use it for plenty of things.
And guess what paper products tend to be wrapped in until they are put in disorders /on shelves? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with a P
Paper.
Reams of printing paper are wrapped in paper. Those stacks of reams are put in cardboard boxes, made of paper. Those are put in metal trucks.
I would recommend going and actually looking at a stack of paper cups. They are pretty much universally in a plastic bag.
Also, those cardboard (or even paper) boxes that printer paper come in? They get put in larger cardboard boxes and crates… which are generally wrapped in glorified plastic wrap before they get loaded into those metal trucks. And often stay wrapped on their pallets at the warehouse until they are set for their final destination.
And, to be clear: That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is effectively the idea behind electric cars. Move the pollution/recycling burden away from the end user and keep it at the distribution center/power plant where more expensive efforts can be done to reduce waste/pollution. And… much like with “clean coal”, the end result tends to be dumpsters full of plastic on their way to the landfill because recycling is effort.
But the idea is sound. Use the more robust polymers for shipping and long term protection. I just… still think 50 days is too little for anything even remotely close to an end user without a LOT of extra coatings (for example: Those paper milk cartons tend to have a LOT of wax… or polymers) which kind of defeat the purpose.
That wax can be natural and biodegradable. Pallets could be protected with hermetically sealed metal walls.
We have no need for plastic. It’s only done because we haven’t banned companies from doing it.
…
Sorry, you want to replace wooden pallets with hermetically sealed metal boxes? Maintenance costs go through the roof and it might be worth reading up on what they actually use to make those seals (hint: Polymer compounds). You also drastically increase the weight at every step AND add very significant logistics issues (can’t have crates too close to the door in case it is rainy). All of which translate to increased consumption of fossil fuels.
Again: We don’t overuse polymers because of wanting a summer home in northern Canada. Polymers are used because of their materials properties being… quite frankly insane. Super light material that can take a beating while providing strong water/weather resistance. Like… your “let’s put things in a metal box” is already solved by just wrapping some fairly cheap plastic wrap around things. Shipping a hundred plastic bottles uses MUCH less energy/fuel than shipping a hundred glass bottles for weight of the bottles alone. And the glass bottles need significantly more packaging/protection to survive shipping which drastically increases costs on top of that.
There is a LOT of room for improvement. EVERYONE hates paper straws but they are a really good idea that greatly reduces how much plastic ends up in a landfill. But people also rapidly realize that those paper straws need to be protected from creation to end use and… that is still going to be plastic. Optimally you are wrapping the box/stack instead of the individual straws so it is still a net gain, but… yeah.
And there is a LOT of work going in to making greener plastics. But when you engineer out the material properties that made you use it in the first place… it is a cool novelty and great for marketing but it doesn’t really change the amount of plastics used in getting that to the point where someone feels good because they are using biodegradable utensils.
It biodegrades in soil in 50 days. Don’t store it in damp, biologically active media and you should be good.
I’ve had a dried flower arrangement in my house for about a year. It’s fine. Slap that baby in the compost tumbler and it will be soil within a few weeks.
Slap that baby, set him free
Dance magic, dance
So don’t store liquid in it? Not viable for beverage containers.
And unless you are going to use a sturdier plastic to surround it (which actually is a very good model because it keeps the harder to recycle stuff out of homes)… tell me you never worked inventory without telling me you never worked inventory?
What percentage of single use plastic is used for storing liquids? I would imagine it’s a minority, with things like plastic bags making up the majority.
Plus very acidic liquids like soda may not be bio-active enough to cause this to break down, depending on what the process is.
Plastic bottles are the most common type of container for fluids and make up a huge portion of plastic waste. Drinks, cooking oil and vinegar, cosmetics, personal hygiene products, cleaning products, motor oil, paints, medical products… and that’s just the common consumer stuff. Plastic bags are a big part too but liquid bottles are certainly not a minority.
You also have to be concerned about the outside of the container. Will it be washed as part of the production/handling process? Will sweat and bacteria from human hands cause it to start breaking down? It will be packed in a box for shipping, then unpacked at a store, then picked up and looked at by who knows how many people before being purchased, then it has to stay in one piece until the product it contains is used up. A bottle of toilet cleaner or shampoo or laundry detergent might be handled hundreds of times, and its lifespan from production to final disposal might be a year or more.
for liquids there’s aluminum or glass
Then we should go back to glass bottles.
Which have massive implications on weight and structural packaging. A plastic soda bottle is light and sturdy. A glass soda bottle is heavy and shatters. Also recycling of glass is not entirely straightforward in a lot of regions.
The world doesn’t (over) rely on polymers just because everyone wants to have a summer home in Alberta. They have materials properties that make them ridiculously good for storage and packaging. They just have very serious implications on the environment.
Reducing those environmental implications is VERY good and a lot of work is going into it. But doing so to the point it removes their beneficial properties… is kind of missing the point.
There’s several big tradeoffs there.
Glass is heavy compared to plastic, and also bulkier. A truck full of product in glass containers will carry substantially less product volume than if it were plastic containers. In order to distribute the equivalent amount of product, more trucks will have to make more trips. When you scale this up to national distribution you’re talking about hundreds more trucks on the road, thousands more trips per year, which is going to have an environmental impact.
Glass is fragile compared to plastic. Some accounting is already done for product loss due to breakage during distribution, but plastic containers are fairly durable (part of the problem of course). If you switch to glass the loss percentage goes up, which again means you have to make more trips to distribute the same amount of product, so compounding the environmental impact.
No, you’re understanding this wrong. They don’t mean it will degrade on the shelf or in transit, only in soil. If true, this is the shit.
Yeah, but soil is basically moisture and bacteria. Same as food, unless it is freeze-dried or so. Still, as alternative to paper straws or one-time cups it could be great.
I agree, it’s for the single use plastics, and for food that already has a short life.
Exactly and single use plastics are the largest problem we face. Medical and food handling would be much more difficult and expensive without single use plastics, so a good-enough plastic say for gloves that get changed really often would be a huge win.
Except for literally anything dry or single use. Packaging for screws, toys, electronics, medical material and also actual items themselves like straws, single use plates/cups/forks, etc.
Completely useless amiright
I was looking at a crystal clear, water tight, biodegradable, algae-based plastic the other day. The problem is, well, that it is biodegradable. You can’t package food with it because it will grow mold and then lose its properties.
Possibly for situations where it stays dry it could be a great plastic, but that pretty much excludes all shipping and food use.
Yeah. I can’t actually think of an application for plastic where this makes sense, but there probably is one.
But this really feels like a proof of concept paper that hit mainstream news. But those tend to actually have very useful applications in niche corners (that are only sometimes weapons…) so cool.
Plastic grocery bags Plastic single use gloves Plastic straws Packaging for electronics Packaging for dry goods like beans/pasta Packaging for short shelf life items like fruit/bread
Honestly, there’s a huge number of things we use plastic for that don’t require it to sit in contact with bacteria/liquid for weeks at a time. I’d be willing to bet it’s the majority even.
Like I said, it really depends upon what exactly triggers “biodegrading”. Because those plastic gloves might be in a box in a warehouse for months prior to getting to the hospital… and then another month in the supply closet.
That is WHY so many products have like five layers of packaging. Because maybe someone left the door open on a rainy day and some of those cardboard boxes got soggy. The plastic wrapping your pallet keeps it out and it is mostly the warehouse workers who suffer (and they’re barely people in the eyes of the law…).
As someone who works with warehouse material handlers (aka forklift operator with PPE) on a daily basis, I am pretty sure they are barely people in their own eyes too.
Single use plastics intended for quick use and then disposal mostly?
I’m thinking something like a medical use where a plastic thing is used exactly once and then thrown away that same day. Maybe a syringe or whatever.
Medical supplies actually probably are a really good application for that. Traditional polymers to wrap the palette, cardboard to wrap the disposables, and then bamboo plastic to wrap the disposables themselves. Since those actually have fairly strict storage requirements once they get off the truck.
Just a question of if that is cost effective to have multiple types of plastic at the factory.
Most biodegradable polymers are water-permeable (water intrusion is how bacteria get inside the material to break it down). Anything water-permeable is not appropriate for medical use, even as a wrapper for something else, because you can’t guarantee that the thing inside is sterile.
And there you go
Not even for plastic cups like at fast food chains? Those are in constant demand and get thrown out instantly after use
Demand varies and there are a LOT of warehouses on the way from the cup factory to the starbucks. Cups can EASILY spend a month or three just sitting in a damp cardboard box at a distribution center. Which is “fine” because they have at least one or two more layers of outer packaging around the stack of venti iced coffee cups.
So they just test it to check if it’s fine or not fine? And then make changes accordingly? Change is necessary and inevitable
Those “changes” are throwing out a significant part of your inventory and, if you have the money, ordering more. So the shipping and manufacturing costs for the same number of plastic cups (or whatever) becomes over 2x because you ALSO have the cost of taking the box of slop to the landfill.
I 100% agree change is necessary. But it is also worth thinking before making the change and deciding if it would actually save on “carbon”.
Well at least it’s biodegradable slop! My experience is it comes with instructions that are inevitably ignored and there’s some heavy sighing, eye rolling, shrugging and it’s put down as “short-term operational variance from sustainability transition” or something else that says “it won’t happen again, guv”
You’re right but because this is a politicized issue, you seem like you’re on the wrong side and therefore are wrong and evil. There is a lot of good work being done on biodegradables but 50 days is way too short of a timespan. If you put a piece of bamboo in the ground it’s not going to biodegrade in 50 days, for example. Most of the disposable plastic we use is on stuff that is wet, so I am incredibly skeptical about the utility of this.
It’s not fruit.