Uplifting News
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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