Plastic packaging protects food from moisture and dirt. If you make the packaging out of a water-soluble material and then eat it, surely that's almost completely useless? Like, now you need some kind of additional outer wrapper to stop your edible packaging from getting contaminated.
The article mentions muffin liners as an alternative use case, but those are usually made of thin paper and are already compostable.
Yeah, this specific bio-material probably doesn't make sense for moisture and dirt.
However, the bio-plastics made from shellfish leftovers (think: crab, lobster, shrimp) would be appropriate for this.
The problem with petroleum based products (Styrofoam, plastics) is that they are crazy cheap due to our oil based economy. At some point the economics of that industry will change, and with it the prevailing winds on using plastics as building materials.
I would welcome more products being made as sturdy as they used to be. Take for example, pooper scoopers. It's actually quite difficult to buy a scissor-style one made of any kind of metal (there's one which is 80ish USD and made of steel - sort of a vanity product). They're all plastic. They all break, some sooner than others. The one I picked up from my parents' house recently was used from about 1990 to 2003 (and left outdoors since), and performs better than any of the plastic ones we used. It's wood and aluminum, and probably was no more expensive than the plastic ones on offer today. We broke a 25 dollar scooper within a month, and the scooper we inherited will likely outlive yet another dog.
Additional sources of revenue for fisheries will increase the scope of which stocks are financially viable to destroy.
If world fisheries had shown that it was possible to control extraction such that we did not destroy stocks, then this would be a great way to meet a significant (~10%, it seems?) portion of world packaging plastics needs. However, it seems pretty clear that the fishing industry as a whole has any interest in ensuring sustainable production.
That's not sufficient macroeconomic justification to push the shellfish remains biofilm forward. See Cobra Effect [1].
This is reflexivity in action [2]. In the first year you start manufacturing this biofilm, your sentiment is true, it is using waste stream. In the Nth year, fisheries are collapsing shrimp stocks, flooding markets with shrimp to extract what used to be a waste stream to eke out ever decreasing margins in a vicious cycle.
Or you just consume the entirety of the waste stream and then stop because it's a low value marginal add on product that doesn't drive an industry. It's not like the demand for cow manure is driving us to create brand new herds simply to output more manure.
Right now what saves us from the cobra effect with such a biofilm is hydrocarbon-based plastics are cheaper than it and the distribution and manufacturing networks are built around them. I'd be perfectly content with no concerns if there are no subsidies tampering with such biofilms; let them organically develop their own markets, manufacturing networks and supply chains, and I completely agree with you that they will naturally stop.
If well-intentioned government subsidies aggressively push for using the waste stream however (about the only way I see such a biofilm ever ramping up beyond niche markets), then it is very difficult to conceive those policy makers calibrating to the same homeostatic outcome. That's not how the plastics industry works. The demand scale is on such a bonkers level that distorts normal incentives.
I always worry about such reflexivity when these breathless articles come out about alternative production-side solutions to our current plastics production-consumption matrix. It's way more complex and large than most people understand outside that industry.
If you compare the price/lb of shellfish vs the price/lb of plastic packaging, it's very hard to imagine any level of subsidy that would result in the tail wagging the dog.
If oil demand decreases enough, it should get more expensive. It seems counterintuitive, but so much of the supply chain depends on moving large amounts of oil, refineries selling different grades of molecules to different customers, and oil companies not having to pay to shut down old wells. Heh, just kidding on the last one, oil firms never pay to shut down wells, they just sell to small firms which can go bankrupt instead.
But the big complicated supply chain for petrochemicals can break at lower scale. Compare how freaked out the markets have gotten at Meta and Netflix for losing users while still being profitable, and you can see how financing could dry up before the wells do.
I doubt it’s enough to phase out plastics, but it might make alternatives more economically viable.
Wow, I didn’t know that refining, shipping, and access to global capital didn’t apply to KSA. Such a magical country.
They’re going to need that magic when the primary export collapses — or if it doesn’t, wet bulb temperatures in the Gulf make it literally unlivable. The $20 a barrel will be even harder to sustain in a protracted civil war, which is where they are headed if they don’t diversify enough.
Muffin liners actually make more sense to me. It’s often hard to get a muffin liner off of the muffin without losing a lot of muffin. An edible liner that has a good texture might have some actual value.
Or you could just sit and try to scrape the residual muffin off with your teeth getting little crumbs all over you and sticky crap all over your fingers like a normal person. Don’t try to play god with your edible wrapper technology. This is the way it’s meant to be.
There are already edible materials that would work like waffle (as in ice cream cones) or rice paper. You could even call it something different to advertise it's green properties, like wuffin or ruffin.
I think the idea is that it becomes like fruit and vegetables. You purchase them unwrapped, wash them, and eat them. This would have implications on the supply chain of course to try and keep these items clean.
It could also replace individually wrapped items, such as in a box of cereal bars the individual bars wouldn't need plastic wrap.
FWIW, if you're curious about the insights from somebody who's crusty enough to make their own protein bars :)
If you care about avoiding "processed foods" in other domains and are consuming shrink-wrapped bars with a shelf life of 2+ months: here be dragons!
I store ours in a glass container the refrigerator, where they're individually wrapped in butcher paper. I'd consider them good outside of the fridge (in the paper) for 32 hours, inside the fridge for a week or two. Making a batch takes about 10 minutes + overnight refrigeration, and the recipe is trivial to scale-up/down in size.
They're certainly not as convenient or robust as shrink-wrapped lara bars, but we're not frequently in situations where the diff disappoints, ymmv.
I find most "protein" bars, processed or unprocessed, are relatively low in protein and function more like energy bars, meal replacement bars, or even weight gainers.
I expect the ones made without processed ingredients like protein powders to be especially in that category. Not that there's anything necessarily bad about that, but it does bug me when folk label products as "high" in protein when all the protein comes from nuts, legumes, etc.
As I understand it, there's disagreement on how efficiently the body absorbs/digests the protein latent in protein powder. Especially when it's in a "dry" form most commonly found in protein bars.
I totally agree re the disappointing macro-nutritional composition of most protein bars. Especially disappointing (to me) is the sugar content and its source (typically rice syrup or corn syrup).
After computing the macros for homemade bars, it's hard to feel like you're getting much bang for the buck with those bars -- it feels like you're better off eating some dried and mixed nuts.
To this mixture, add 100g rolled oats, 80g whey, ~200g nuts and seeds (can be crushed or whole, although partially-crushed is a bit easier). I use pecans, pepitas, walnuts, almonds, cashews. Whatever is in the pantry.
Transfer + compress to an appropriate-sized casserole dish (above is good for 8x8) with a large spoon, I usually line it first with paper to make later transfer easier.
Cover + chill for at least 1 hour, then slice with a sharp instrument (I use a pizza slicer, but a chef's knife is great). These proportions yield 12-ish bars. But you can compute the macronutrients for yourself to decide how big a serving should be.
In short, it's pretty similar to granola. Only without baking and without oil. I've found the flavor to vary widely depending on the honey/pb/whey used.
But would you put an apple “naked”? A cucumber? A tomato?
At least for me - when I hike I usually have a box and put all of those items there “raw” - the box protects them from mechanical forces but I don’t need to individually wrap my apples inside that box. Having other edible things have such an edible covering would be amazing actually.
Fruits and vegetables tend to have their own inbuilt wrapping that protects them from dirt, moisture, etc. Whereas an oat bar or protein bar is often quite porous and would get impregnated with dirt and stuff very quickly. It's an absurd comparison to make.
The bars wouldn't be exposed to air, that's what edible wraps like what is described in the article are for.
For backpacks and the like you will need something else to keep it clean, same as you would for an apple. May I present to you the lunch box, already used by 100s of millions.
This is how your parents and grandparents lived. Stuff got dirty, and instead of tossing it after having used it once, they.. washed it!
When I go shopping, I:
* bring my own bag
* buy oat, rice, sugar, pasta, chocolate etc in bulk (w/ textile bags I bring)
* refill detergent containers in-shop
* buy fruit & veg without packaging
.. and I have no meaningful reduction of my living standard. I know it's difficult to make some sacrifices. But honestly, if we can't as a society be ars*d to do even that, perhaps we deserve to disappear after ecological collapse, and the geopolitical consequences of that.
I've heard that there is a powder processing device called entoleter that are typically NOT used in Europe for grain and powdered food products, as ambient temperature is low enough for bugs to hatch and grow on such food in considerable likelihood.
What I'm saying is, the chance of that happening IS considerably high elsewhere, and in such elsewhere it is imperative that oat, rice, not sugar but pasta, and chocolate, must be denied of life under sterile light of an ultra processing foodstuff factory and somewhat hermetically sealed. Otherwise you wouldn't know what you'll be getting later.
Just something which reason isn't immediately obvious sometimes.
You seem quite hell-bent on denouncing containers. Yet, a good container with a plastic seal on the lid will keep your food completely clean and be pretty airtight to keep it fresh for a while.
I use reusable containers for 90% of the stuff I use, especially tools, projects, etc.
I also use glass reusable
containers all the time for food, as they don’t soak up weird smells and stains that can’t be cleaned out, and have bacterial problems and leeching issues like reusable plastic containers.
They aren’t practical for anywhere they’ll be exposed to impacts a lot or weight matters, like kids lunches or whatever, so I use plastic ones there.
But I’m under no illusions that any of those make any sense whatsoever for large scale food distribution, and neither should anyone else.
From the article: “The cranberry film can work as a replacement for film plastic, protecting fruits and vegetables with delicate skins, such as English cucumbers.”
Another point to add: rodents. This is an issue in large warehouses, in humid climates. Plastic is more resilient against rodents, since it is not edible.
For rats, cats, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks, and mice (standard warehouse dwellers) the digesting part of plastic isn't the main issue. The plastic may attract them, but the edible content in the plastic bags is often the target. Plastic of nearly any make is easily torn through (chewing, clawing, knawing, etc.) but the shear amount of plastic either as bag or pallet-wrap is the real issue, all over the world.
We need to at least start replacing the pallet-wrap with non-petroleum material.
Cling film does nothing to keep pests out: beetles & weevils go through plastic bags and I've had a persistent rat chew through 2mm of hard plastic box. More important would be retaining the protective atmosphere that perishables are commonly packed with.
"since it is not edible". As of this time, but I wouldn't put it past them to evolve an ability to eat plastic somehow. (Though if they did, a new rat-based eco industry would be born)
I wonder if it would be possible to design a wrapper that wild animals would happily eat. Hypothetically at least this would cut down on the effects of littering.
I think the parent comment is suggesting using it as a food ingredient, not as packaging. Like dumplings, or like how people make fancy desserts with edible gold leaf.
This is nice, but we should avoid strictly focusing on the environmentally-specific properties of the product, but rather on whether the manufacturing process is scalable and cheap enough, and whether the product's other properties, like strength and food safety are worth the trade-off. Especially when starting the article with "But first, the industry needs to get on board."
It's like that solar road idea: 1000x more expensive, 100x more complex, and requires constant maintenance.
From the article: “But as folks are still interested in takeout, some experts think there’s a timely opportunity to update food storage options. Zhao says that’s why industry and researchers should work closely together.
“There’s not a perfect product yet. How can we reduce the cost? How can the formulations and technology more easily scale up through companies?” says Zhao.”
This seems unsustainable. Cranberry fields forever?
Seriously, we need legally imposed limits on the use of single-use plastic wrapping, a correction of the economics and a change in habits.
Our family consumes two kinds of crispbread. One manufacturer (Wasa) uses paper for its wrapping. The other (FinnCrisp) use a plastic wrapping inside a carton box. That's just absurd.
Other products may not have a single-use alternative, like meat. Consigned containers is a solution here, already widely in use for beverages in many countries.
As long as manufacturers can get away with wrapping stuff in plastic, they will. We need to pressure them into finding alternatives.
As someone else pointed out here, we are paying a high price already for the damage we're doing to the environment (waste collection infrastructure, rising insurance prices, tax-funded repairs after natural disasters). If we folded those costs into the prices of the products most responsible for them, and added some legislation on top, we could change quite a few habits in relatively little time. It just needs someone with guts to make those decisions, which is something in rather short supply, at least here in Germany...
The paper packaging of Wasa has a thin plastic liner, which you can see stretching by slowly tearing the paper. It is probably better that the thicker FinnCrisp plastic, but Wasa paper does not belong in the paper bin for recycling.
We compost many things at home, but cardboard boxes around food are a minefield. Most look like cardboard, but after you compost them you'll be picking out the plastic sheet that was bonded into them. One that particularly annoys me are cat food boxes. The cat food is separately wrapped (in unrecyclable foil-bonded-plastic, of course), and then the cardboard box containing those packets has a hidden plastic layer - for what possible reason!?!
I've been packaging cat food when I was in high school and they do that because, when a single of those cat food packets rips open for whatever reason, the smell is pervasive and intensive. It spreads through the whole warehouse, from a single open bag, getting ever worse as it spoils. The plastic lining in the displays is to protect the shipment - think of an the oilsump the cellar which contains a houses oil tank is lined with. It's a way to contain the spread of a hazardous substance in case the probably containment unit fails.
We shred all cardboard that's not shiny. Generally you can feel if there's a coating. I will also be picking out plastic from our soil for years, but you use the resources you have. It's a worthwhile tradeoff IMHO.
Why is wrapping in thin plastic a problem if it prevents food waste? I think of the cucumbers covered in plastic. It’s a very small amount of plastic—and I imagine that it ends up saving energy if it means fewer cucumbers are wasted. Perhaps there is a way to model when plastic is “good” or “bad?”
I haven't bought a cucumber wrapped in plastic in years (I actively avoid them) and have thrown away maybe two cucumbers in the same time.
At this point, I think any plastic is a problem, and it needs very serious consideration whether plastic should be used. I'm fine with wrapping sterilized medical equipment in plastic. Crispbread, not so much.
> have thrown away maybe two cucumbers in the same time.
that plastic is not for you not throwing away two cucumbers, is for the supermarket and distribution centers to not throw away pallets of them, it increase the efficiency of the whole logistic chain (which runs on oil)
Unlike me, my children will never experience their home planet without microplastics everywhere, from the highest peak down to the deepest trench in the ocean. They will have to pay a hefty price for what we and those before us have done to the environment. I think that's a bit much.
Where's the cost-benefit for them of wrapped cucumbers?
Like I said, there are applications where plastic is justified, medical devices for example. Cucumbers, bread, smartphones, cutlery, plants, cereal, rice, potatoes, toys: I think there are plastic-free solutions that we should now absolutely and urgently go for.
If you live in a developed country, your contribution to the microplastic problem is minuscule regardless of the amount of plastic packaging you use. Landfilled, or better yet burned in industrial setting plastics don't get into the oceans, they are either fixed there for millennia, or don't exist anymore. Plastics are a non-issue for countries with functioning waste management, which is coincidentally the countries that can afford caring about it the most, so in a sense there is a self-contradiction in this debate.
International treaties forcing developing countries to get their waste management together combined with targeted investment there would help way more.
Germany exports most of its plastic waste. China stopped importing it a few years ago, so now it gets bought up by African countries. I think your assumptions about a functioning waste system do not apply to most developed countries I know, unfortunately.
According to [1] and [2], most German plastic waste goes to Netherlands. Moreover, apparently a third of it gets incinerated or recycled domestically. So yes, officials turning a blind eye to developing countries pseudo-recycling plastic waste is a problem, but 1) it's not as clear cut as you present it 2) surely building a few incinerators is easier than reinventing all logistical chains to not use plastics?
Thanks for posting this. The issue I have here is that I would need to spend hours researching whether wrapping a single kind of produce is OK or not. It's a science!
Another example: is it better to buy the non-organic, locally produced apple or the organic apple that comes from Argentina? (I'm in Europe).
In the store, I need simple heuristics to make my decisions. My heuristics:
- Is there plastic? -> Pass
- Is it produce from far away? -> Pass, mostly
- Is it non-organic? -> Pass, if there's an organic alternative.
And yeah, sometimes it's a decision between the produce that's organic but wrapped in plastic and that which is conventional but without wrapping and grown locally. That's a head-scratcher every time.
Here be dragons. The instant you invoke cost-benefit you've lost the Overton Window and industry shills duped you.
The most common mechanism used is getting you to uncritically accept the timeframe the analysis takes place within, and the futility of a substantive, quantum qualitative difference. These go hand in hand.
The most common timeframe is "one generation", 30 years, usually framed as "zomg we're being SO nice to deign to accept lesser profits on such a long-ass timescale!".
If I could gift future generations an aquatic and soil ecosystem reverted to pre-anthropogenic methylmercury levels, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But that doesn't get accomplished when cost-benefit is measured in 30 years, but more like 60-90 years with Thanos snap-like policy action, closer to 3-600 years with cheaters accounted for.
Plastics disintegrating into our environment everywhere is the methylmercury story all over again. Industry externalization into our progeny's generations that will functionally last centuries into the future, for the financial well being of only a few hundreds of millions of families globally to afford contrivances with fleeting benefit even to themselves. Even in the "best" cases where instead of blowing the financial gain at the cost of externalization upon a frivolous 1000th Rolex or Nike, they sent Ruòxī and Sam to Harvard, that still doesn't help future generations contending with a deep energy problem of these diffuse materials pervading the ecosystem.
Because that's the real crux: this is an energy gradient problem within a timeline that stretches out for centuries when our civilizational economic planning horizon can't see past 30 years in the mainstream, 100 years in "outlier" use cases. Concentrating the wealth and material benefit of these materials happens within a brief time window set against that kind of timeline, using a specific amount of energy.
Once the material is dispersed into the ecosystem, it takes a lot longer and be much more energy intensive to perform harm reduction than it ever did to wield it in the first place.
We're seeing this pattern repeat increasingly more frequently because our civilization's scale is emerging more such use cases with different materials without considering cradle-to-cradle design. It seems a lot like a Tainter-style complexity collapse vector to me, but that's just my personal observations, YMMV. Actions are an entirely separate thread of discussion.
This is the kind of misguided environmentalism that does a lot more harm than good. It's not fashionable to say so, but plastic is a trivial issue on pretty much every possible count - when you do the math. Trying to "fix" it on the other hand often makes our lives miserable (paper straws) or just plain backfires massively. Growing cranberries takes energy, which for the foreseeable future means oil. Want to bet how much oil is being burned to grow a ton of cranberry film, and compare it with just turning that oil directly intro plastic?
There is no bar for the massive amount of plastic trash we are putting in the ocean there though. The cranberry film would be about microplastics and damage to wildlife, not greenhouse gas emissions.
Who's "we"? I'm pretty sure developing countries don't throw plastic in the ocean, if only because there is already a non-green much more profitable alternative: burn it. In Europe there is a well set up "recycling" industry that takes plastic and burns it at high temperatures for applications like cement making. Not great, not terrible, and definitely not throwing away money in the sea.
That’s true, but it might not be as much as imagined:
“A reasonable estimate [for the amount of plastic produced by rich countries that end up in the ocean] might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country.”
But at the same time, it could replace some in some applications and that is worth doing.
Anything that lowers the amount of plastics being used and contributes towards it is a good thing.
It does need to replace all and every use of transparent plastics, but even some is good.
And I don't believe we can find a silver bullet biopolymer that 1:1 replaces or even exceeds plastic for all usecases rightaway.
It’s only a good thing if it actually reduces environmental impact, but as others have pointed out, for biopolymers that’s not the case.
Anything that reduces environmental impact is worth pursuing, but many products like this are actually even more environmentally harmful, just sometimes in different ways. It turns out sometimes the best approach for now is reducing and mitigating the impact of plastics rather than eliminating their use at all costs. Sometimes those costs can be too high.
Here in Norway, soda bottles were returned, washed and used again.
They moved to single-use bottles some years ago, using recycled plastic[1], citing that the energy required for the transportation, washing etc of the reused bottles was higher than that of making new from recycled plastic.
A big issue is that a bottle going back to be washed is mostly air, so you get relatively few in a single truck. The new ones gets shredded at the store, thus you get a lot more plastic in a single truck.
So any reusable container would at the very least need to be stackable. However, I think the bottle story[2] here in Norway shows recycling is perhaps better than reusing.
I think the issue is designing them around sterilization.
Very few people demand sterilized shopping baskets in supermarkets, but they will for restaurant dishes, and you’ll notice more wear is present in the latter despite they are more gently handled inside a place.
Because for this the stores and consumers gave do change their ways. Biodegradable plastic alternatives are compatible with the present convenience-centered consumer behavior.
The cost of sorting has to then be factored in (because plastics are often not perfect hydrocarbons, they contain a variety of elements depending on bulk composition and additives). And, even perfectly sorted plastics will not burn as cleanly as freshly refined hydrocarbons, so you need to factor that cost in as well.
And for what benefit? Plastics in a land fill are a form of carbon sequestration if the alternative is burning them or fresh hydrocarbons.
IMO the value in replacing plastic use has very little to do with energy/CO2. It's more related to other health/environmental effects (microplastics, etc).
The problem with everything is cost. If the cost was there to do so we would have. Plastics are too cheap and mainstream to use anything else. America could change and go this way but the rest of the world would have to do so to actually make a massive impact. This is where the cheap alternative packaging never reaches anyway because it isn't cheap enough, check how much plastics are used in Asia and you'll understand why this isn't long term feasible.
Not sold on biopolymers, but I don’t like this line of reasoning based on finger pointing. Every country can claim they’re just a small part of the problem and everyone else should change first. What should matter is whether it’s the right thing to do.
Huh, I'm surprised no one else brought up cellophane. I had assumed it was the same thing as plastic wrap, but a quick trip to Wikipedia reveals that it's biodegradable, compostable, and made from plants. Seems like a much better fit, and already commercialized!
Spend a lot of time cutting lots of zucchini, as one does for food storage, and you end up with a kind of film on your hands that's difficult to wash off. I imagine there is a lot of opportunity for biodegradable alternatives to plastics.
No time soon...
Plastics are mostly a by product of petroleum refining so it's hard to beat the economic factors. And the manufacturing machines have been in use for so long that they are completely paid for so adding one more plastic whatever is relatively cheap compared to any new gizmo.
At this point the only way to stop plastic products is to subsidize a replacement to the point of making it cheaper than plastic or to make it illegal. Both of which are unlikely to happen now.
When looking at plastic replacements, we need to look at the economics as well as the replacement.
Well yeah they are “cheap” to produce but expensive to clean up and dispose of. As long as governments “subsidize” plastics by cleaning after them themselves rather than forcing manufacturers to pay for it, you will have straws and plastic trash on the streets/parks/rivers/oceans.
The funny thing is that we are _already_ paying for it with all the trash handling infrastructure - mostly government payed and supported by taxes around the world.
The money is there - imagine paying less for trash, but a bit more for the product - still the same amount of money spent. But now the manufacturer has the incentive to use those new films and _not_ pay for its disposal. As economies of scale kick in, we can have clean environment and pay less for it all (less trash infra).
I just hope people (governments) realize this in my lifetime…
We've been using washable/reusable food wrappers made from linen impregnated with beeswax for a while now. They last for a year or two and then you toss them on the compost heap.
Unfortunately the very properties that make plastics sit around in landfills - their resistance to being broken down by the environment or living organisms - are exactly the properties you want for packaging. You either find good methods of recycling or disposing good packaging material, or you change your behavior so that you're utilizing less packaging material. Anything that could be replaced by a dissolvable film probably doesn't need to be there in the first place.
Pardon the ignorance but aside from cost, what is wrong with using glass? Why not just make a ton of glass from cheap sand and scale/automate it to make it cheaper?
To make glass resistant to shattering from jostling in shipping, it needs to be thicker than the equivalent sturdiness from plastic. That means excess weight and volume, making transportation more energy-intensive.
Plastic is also easier to mold into a variety of shapes, so you get conveniently stackable containers and lids without much extra cost (the same shapes introduce stress points in the glass where fractures could occur).
Plastic can also be made flexible, i.e. as shrinkwrap (which this product would replace in some cases). You aren't going to wrap vulnerable fruit and veg (like english cucumbers) in glass wrap.
Glass can be easier to recycle, but again you're fighting volume and mass in transportation as well as waste management. It's great for things like liquids if you have businesses willing to re-use them, but they also have to expend the extra energy to properly clean and sanitize them before they can be reused.
The last time I bought a soda from a company that would take back glass bottles and reuse them, the flavor could only be described as "soap". I never again wondered why every other company sold disposable aluminum and plastic after that.
And I don't know the economics for making it not so, but it's quite dangerous when it breaks. Not something I want around food (barring glassware that's not particularly fragile).
Glass literally becomes sand after not too long in the environment. It's energy intensive but so is aluminum processing from bauxite and several levels above it. Both are really good at reusability though, also on that front aluminum does just as good at not breaking down.
It’s actually a big problem, we’re running low on sand that’s good for making glass, you need sea sand for glass, desert sand is no good, it’s the wrong shape. Nefarious actors are actually stealing beach sand in the dead of night. It’s a problem.
A generally applicable rule of thumb to apply is as soon as you need to generate heat, you're spending a lot of energy on the process, which is far more damaging and requiring of an overhaul than packaging.
I wanted to see if Willie Wonka already had a patent on it, and found
this headline [1]. Now we need to worry whether it will be made by
slave Oompa Loompa labour.
There is a great company here in Australia (https://greatwrap.com.au) already doing this at decent scale with potato waste. Their manufacturing costs are on par with traditional plastic wrap.
> Of all the ideas presented, creating a fibrous film that is edible, no-waste, anti-microbial and water soluble was the one that took off, and Zhao published her first paper on the subject 15 years ago. Since then, she’s continued to tweak and refine the formulation.
This industry is driven by ROI and waste reduction. If this worked, it would've worked long ago.
The better way to do it would be to fund through taxes the new method to see if it works. You shouldn't make people switch to an unknown by making their lives worse.
If you want people to stop making plastic, you need to come up with another material that will work for the various things plastic is used for. Hence this article.
It’s worth noting also that it’s not really the consumer plastic waste that’s the big problem. The Atlantic garbage barge in the 1970s made people panicked about a lack of landfill capacity, but the truth of the barge was more a political dispute more than anything else and we have the ability to keep handling solid waste for ages (composting is still important in that it will reduce methane emissions from landfills, but it’s not important in terms of reducing landfill use).
The bigger issue is that small pieces of plastic from the manufacturing process end up as environmental waste. I did some volunteer cleanup a dozen years ago near Ballona Creek and the amount of tiny pieces (bean-sized and smaller) of plastic and styrofoam along the creek was just mind-blowing. If you find yourself near any plastic manufacturing facility, you’ll see lots of tiny bits of plastic all over the place. Sawdust and metal shavings get dispersed similarly, but they tend to have less of an environmental impact.
Firstly, lets clarify. I don't mean "stop making plastic entirely", that would be impractical and silly.
What we have not done as a society is make any effort at all to place a limit on how much plastic is created.
We likely have no mechanisms at all for knowing who makes plastics, the quantity they make, the purpose they are made for and who buys them.
Step one is to somehow get limits in place on the amount the is created.
Right now, plastic production is an absolute free for all. You could set up "The Infinity Plastic" company tomorrow and spew out so much plastic that it would completely cover the entire earth and that would break no law at all, no one would know or notice.
It stupid that as a society we are so obsessed with dealing with the output without any effort to control the input.
Corn starch is already a really good alternative, we use it in our house for bin liners, I wonder why it's not more popular as food packaging. Perhaps it has issues with durability over the time periods for which shelf storage is required.
Corn starch sounds good put growing corn is energy intensive. Right now, it takes a great deal of carbon based fuels to grow it. Plus every ear of corn that's grown for a plastic replacement is one less that's grow for food. It's an expensive trade off. Re-use and no-use of plastic is probably the best way to deal with plastic trash.
The article mentions muffin liners as an alternative use case, but those are usually made of thin paper and are already compostable.