Grapevine Canes Can Be Converted Into Plastic-Like Material That Will Decompose

In fairness, those industrial waste streams are mostly produced by “recycling” facilities for consumer waste.

The whole plastic straw thing is nuts. The old waxed paper straws were fine. The new “paper” straws are coated in PFAS and way worse for your health and the environment than most alternatives.

This article reminds me of that. Cellulose isn’t a new technology, but, like wax paper straws, it’s apparently forgotten arcane knowledge.

It's interesting to me that you think the point of greatest effectiveness is exactly where I'd say realistically all hope is lost, the oceans being so vast of a surface and volume. This is end-of-pipe thinking where I believe we should really start at one of the many points earlier in the process: industrial consumption of materials and industrial waste management are such points, and as you say protection of waterways from pollution. Given how lousy mankind has proven to be when it comes to collecting and effectively re-using plastic waste while avoiding concomitant pollution of water and air and material down-cycling, the real mistake lies in the sheer enormous tonnage-per-year and its growth of plastic. This volume of production should have never happened in the first place. But of course it has so there's a place for ocean cleanup efforts. But to state that "the best investment [...] would be automatic cleanup mechanisms" while denigrating research efforts to produce better plastic-ersatz to me sounds like futuristic techno-boondoggle-babble, not unlike that crazy 'hyperloop' thing. Automatic ocean cleanup robots! Yaay! LA to NY in under 30 minutes! Yaay! Colonies on Mars! Yaa---wait wot?? People can't even cleanup after themselves or avoid throwing their trash into the next river, but no problem, we'll clean that up in no time AUTOMATICALLY?? C'mon give me a break.

Or movie / photographic film?

Cellophane is still used to refer to LDPE grocery bags in former soviet immigrant diaspora

My point is it doesn't have to be a complete solution to replacing plastic to be able to have some benefits to replacing some plastics.

You can have local manufacturing processes so that it doesn't have to get stuck in a truck in Texas for a month.

And there'll still be uses for the long lived plastics. You don't have to use one plastic for everything - like we don't today.

Building a box that can last for centuries when you're only going to use it for 25 minutes and toss it is pretty wild if you think about it.

Agree, but I don't see any mention of that in the article, so I don't have enough information to argue for that.

I'm sure we can agree though that having 17-day decomposing plastics that don't contaminate with heat and water is a good thing, so I hope it is that.

What contaminants would result from cellulose-based plastics like in the article? I'd guess probably things that'd at worst make the hot and wet thing taste bad, no?

So do we already do this? And if not, why not?

Polyolefin plastics like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene

and even

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene

are "solid hydrocarbons" but most plastics are more complex than that. One reason we quit burning trash in many places is the presence of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride

which produces HCl which eats the incinerator. [1] Sure you can build a chemically tougher incinerator and add lime but practically stripping toxins from incinerators is a function of building a stripper tuned to whatever toxins are expected to be in the particular waste and frequently adding something that reacts with them. You can't really "burn up" heavy metals and certain other poisons and those either go up the stack or are part of the ash that has to be disposed of.

A technology you hear about more than you hear about real implementations is "chemical recycling of plastics" through pyrolysis which implement more or less controlled combustion and captures petrochemical molecules that can be used either for fuel or to make plastics and other chemicals: these manage to capture or consume most of the products but some of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are produced when you burn plastic are practically drugs that cause cancer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzo(a)pyrene

[1] Plenty of others contain oxygen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate or nitrogen such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styren... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon

> It's one of those environmental slam dunks with zero downsides

In relation to directly burning oil for fuel, yeah. In relation to other disposal methods, there's still the pretty major downside of being dependent on a non-renewable resource, in addition to…

> (Before you ask: Modern incinerators do not release any toxins from burning plastic, none.)

Greenhouse gas emissions are still an issue, though, no? Or do the incinerators capture that?

How do these systems handle the extra crap on the plastic?

A lot of food grade wax is carnauba.

Compostable plastics don't compost if you just throw them in a compost heap, you need to compost them in high-temperature conditions.

yeah I mentioned municipal compost because they can get the compost temperature way higher than we can at home scale. It should break down in the big compost piles they have

I thought it was all PLA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingeo

I think there's also "biodegradable" plastic which has cornstarch in it which allows bacteria to degrade it, but that's not the same thing?

> See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet.

That really should be prosecuted for false advertising. Just because I can physically flush Orbeez down the toilet doesn't mean it's safe to do so.

My understanding is most manicipal compost facilities can handle them - the vast majority of manicipalities don't have a facility at all. They are expensive. A home pile won't compost them, a pile at manicipal size is likely a health hazzard and so not a good option.

I'd assume those bags would be okay considering they break down after a few days of holding compostable materials, and frequently make a mess in the compost bin. The "compostable" cutlery is definitely not compostable under normal household situations though.

Where I live they have scales that tare at the beginning as part of the process of using your own bag.

Are bags so heavy that you need to tare them out?

That's such an American fear.

Wash it (as you should anyways) and you'll be fine ...

I hate to break it to you, but the loose produce in store isn't clean. That's why you must wash produce before you eat it.

Sorry--I don't understand the risk. Are you concerned about germs? Pesticides? Other?

As someone who works in a market, eating anything without cooking or washing it first is a bad idea. Most of it is fine, but people are disgusting and there's no way of knowing how many people have touched your apple, if someone's kid managed to lick it without you noticing, or someone managed to push everything off the shelf onto the nonslip mat before they got stopped. Bagged produce can be even worse, given the amount of condensation inside the bag after it warms up on the loading dock and then sits in the cooler. The mister above the fresh greens and such doesn't do much and they regularly get touched and knocked out. The potatoes are probably the best, as the dirt on them is obvious.

If you live in an area with entitled people and spineless corporate rules that don't allow stores to confront people over pets, that's instantly worse than everything else combined. Pets like to lie on the floor, someone's dog has peed on the floor, 5 different random people have petted hugged or picked up that dog and 3 others since they left the house. One of those people is probably a cashier who then handles every item you've bought. And then someone inhaled pet hair and sneezed.

You can bring your own, non-plastic bags. I do wonder if maybe some cultures just don't have this and so the deprecation of plastic bags has left everyone quite confused.

It's a very solved problem, has been for centuries probably. You can even get some with little wheels! If you absolutely can't handle the looseness of the fruits amongst your shopping, you could use string nets.

We farm trees for paper anyway.

Again, force yourself to go back or do without whenever you forget, and you’re going to start remembering really fast.

Additionally, don’t just take them when you know you’ll need them, do it before. Next time you need to leave your house to go somewhere, grab some and put them in your car. Done. Go put some right now next to your wallet or keys or literally on the handle of your house’s door.

Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned. You can’t forget to bring what’s already inside the store.

The trick is to always have them where you will need them. I always have one or two in my backpack, in my car, in my luggage when I travel... Their size and weight is almost nothing and the only effort is putting them back after use. Which is where it occasionally fails, sure.

> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.

I put our reusable ones on the floor in the entrance to the garage and then that reminds me to put them back in the trunk whenever I go to the car for whatever reason. Then I always have them while out.

I've sometimes left them in the car but just excuse myself at the checkout and go fetch them while the groceries are being rung up.

> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.

Then take a bunch in the other 25%. You can just leave them in the car.

Grab a bundle right now, or whenever you’re at home and remember, and put them next to your keys, your wallet, or hang them on the handle of your door.

> I like them better as they are bigger and stronger.

Sure, use whatever you like. Just don’t let perfect be in the way of good.

> Even if I managed to get a bag, the other 75% of the time I forget to take it into the shop and leave it in my car.

Then go back to your car! It will be mildly annoying the first two times, and the third time it won’t happen. I mentioned exactly that in my comment.

> Even if I manage all of that, 25% of the time I will end up not having enough bags.

Then start bringing more. This isn’t hard. Leave the extras in your car.

Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned.

None of your mentioned obstacles is insurmountable. On the contrary, they are all exceedingly trivial to overcome with the tiniest amount of will to do so.

Would it make sense to keep those bags in your car? Or in some of your pockets even ?

Japan recycles but also a whole bunch of their waste is incinerated. I think they super-heat it to reduce emissions but guessing that also costs energy which also secondarily causes emissions.

Japan incinerates most of their plastic.

Most of that plastic can't be recycled so it's probably being burned or thrown away.

30mpg, 10 miles, means two pounds of gasoline, 910grams, knock off or add 100g for ethanol per your preference, a google says about 5grams per bag, so nearly 200 bags.

Nowhere close to 10k, but nontrivial. And, this gets reduced and sometimes outright negated if you reuse the bag. Doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate if plastic shopping bags are the beat choice though.

I don't think replacing them with store bought doggy poo and cat litter bags is better. It's not a reduction and theres no reuse. If you find yourself discarding them outright, then find an alternative I guess.

At least microplastics don't make you angry and violent that we can tell.

On the other hand, it's going to be around (relative to pre-emission levels) for a lot longer than the lead (paint gets chipped off and disposed of, we stopped using it in end-consumer products, etc)

Sure plastic aren't great for the environment when we're just dumping it out there without much care. Obviously reducing waste and reusing is what we should strive for on all fronts. Demonizing one thing results in overcompensation on the flip side and we know for a fact that that's not where we want to end up either. Remember when we tried to reduce paper use as much as possible because of deforestation? Or saturated fats?