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Could Dissolvable Cranberry Film Replace Plastic Packaging Someday?
- batch12 4y agoSpend 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.
- csande17 4y agoPlastic 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.
- jimmiebtlr 4y agoEdible packaging would also be biodegradable and a big plus, agreed that trying to eat it would pretty much defeat the purpose. Could make some interesting food items with an edible film though.
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoEdible doesn't make sense, because then we need a removeable layer around it to protect the edible part.
- csande17 4y agoI 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.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y agoThe article describes how this edible part is also anti-microbial, if it were to be consumed instead of just thrown in a composter.
- bee_rider 4y agoI 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.
- morepork 4y agoI 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.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y agoFrom the article: “The cranberry film can work as a replacement for film plastic, protecting fruits and vegetables with delicate skins, such as English cucumbers.”
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoMy protein bars need individual wrap. I am not putting them 'naked' inside of my hiking backpack. Not to mention how nasty the last one is when it takes you 2 months to finish a box... All of them exposed to air? Thanks but no thanks.
- Renaud 4y agoThat’s what tin boxes are for. They keep their content fresh and protect it.
- lazide 4y agoSo a container for your wrapped product? That gets full of random lint and dust? Meh.
- jonasdegendt 4y agoYou 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.
- 4y ago
- amluto 4y agoMuffin 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.
- sockaddr 4y agoOr 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.
- robertlagrant 4y agoThe scientists were so intent on seeing if they could improve muffins. They never stopped to consider if they should.
- fy20 4y agoThere 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.
- h4waii 4y agoI feel like "nuffin" makes good sense, nuffin' but edible muffin when you use nuffin wraps.
- alistairSH 4y agoI cooking muffins with liners the norm? We don't use them. A healthy smear of olive oil in the pan and the muffins come out just fine.
- irjustin 4y agowater-soluable packaging would be impossible in high humidity environments.
- RajT88 4y agoYeah, 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.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago> At some point the economics of that industry will change, and with it the prevailing winds on using plastics as building materials. KSA can pump oil at current rates for 40 years at $20 per barrel. That'll definitely be enough for global plastic consumption. Economics itself isn't going to phase out plastics in my lifetime.
- labster 4y agoIf 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.
- sn41 4y agoAnother 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.
- thombat 4y agoCling 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.
- numpad0 4y agoMites and liquids are issues too. Existing aluminized plastic packaging serves purposes to protect food against those.
- taylorius 4y ago"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)
- conorcleary 4y agoFor 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.
- lxe 4y agoThis 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.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 4y agoFrom 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.”
- nonrandomstring 4y agoI 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. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/oct/21/waste-free-willy-wonka-packaging-consumers https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/oct/21...
- andrewstuart 4y ago
- jtbayly 4y agoIf 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.
- andrewstuart 4y agoDisagree. 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.
- dools 4y agoCorn 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.
- WheelsAtLarge 4y agoCorn 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.
- 4y ago
- flybrand 4y agoSure, it 'could' - anything is possible! > 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.
- macintux 4y agoOf the many things capitalism excels at, pricing in externalities is not one of them. Find a more ecological alternative and then tax the hell out of the current methods.
- robertlagrant 4y agoThe 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.
- jmoak3 4y agoMeta comment, but for any article saying: "Could ...... ?" 95% of the time, the answer is no
- nkozyra 4y agoFully encapsulated by Betteridge's law.
- vore 4y agoThis is such a Hacker News meme comment that never adds anything of value every time it gets posted.
- nkozyra 4y agoWhere is the meme? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- pepperidgeFarm 4y agoFully encapsulated by Pepperidge’s Farm.
- vore 4y agohttps://hn.algolia.com/?query=betteridge's+law&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=betteridge's+law&type=comment
- nkozyra 4y agoI think a "meme" is more than "gets mentioned a lot." Given the person who I replied to didn't know there was a name for it, I think it was warranted.
- jmoak3 4y agoI didn’t know this had a name, thank you
- WheelsAtLarge 4y agoNo 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.
- seer 4y agoWell 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…
- lazide 4y agoPlastic is not expensive to clean up and dispose of at all. It’s perfectly fine to literally bury alongside everything else.
- _8j50 4y agoPardon 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?
- 14 4y agoGlass is heavy and would increase the carbon footprint of some items.
- morepork 4y agoGlass is incredible carbon intensive to make, and takes practically forever to break down. It's also fragile.
- macintux 4y agoAnd 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).
- hanniabu 4y agoDoesn't matter if it takes forever to break down, glass is inert and nontoxic
- oyashirochama 4y agoGlass 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.
- notacop31337 4y agoA 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.
- zdragnar 4y ago
- jasonhansel 4y ago[flagged]
- system2 4y agoGood old BuzzFeed strategy. Didn't know it had a name for it.
- rishflab 4y agoWhy don’t we just burn plastic for energy. We burn hydrocarbons for energy anyway, why not substitute some coal for plastic waste. Not an expert on this matter but I am pretty sure most hydrocarbons can be burnt pretty cleanly in the right conditions.
- tireonfire 4y agoThat's what Japan does. I was just over there, you have to sort all your trash. Burnable or not burnable.
- chairhairair 4y agoThe 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).
- colordrops 4y agoWhy cant we just use a bunch of different sized reusable containers that you return to the store?
- Sparkyte 4y agoHonestly this... I already use reusable bags.
- puchatek 4y agoBecause for this the stores and consumers gave do change their ways. Biodegradable plastic alternatives are compatible with the present convenience-centered consumer behavior.
- __turbobrew__ 4y agoYea. My elevator pitch for this is “shipping containers for everyday items”. If we standardize on reusable container sizes then they can be returned, washed, and reprocessed back into the supply chain.
- numpad0 4y agoI 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.
- magicalhippo 4y agoHere 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. [1]: https://www.coca-cola.no/nyheter-og-kampanjer/i-norge/100--rpet https://www.coca-cola.no/nyheter-og-kampanjer/i-norge/100--r... [2]: https://www.coca-cola.no/baerekraft/emballasje/redusertklimautslipp https://www.coca-cola.no/baerekraft/emballasje/redusertklima...
- gavinballard 4y agoThere is a great company here in Australia (https://greatwrap.com.au https://greatwrap.com.au) already doing this at decent scale with potato waste. Their manufacturing costs are on par with traditional plastic wrap.
- Sparkyte 4y agoThe 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.
- simonh 4y agoNot 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.
- RF_Savage 4y agoI doubt it can do it for many items. 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.
- simonh 4y agoIt’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.
- cseleborg 4y agoThis 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... End of rant.
- kupfer 4y agoThe 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.
- cseleborg 4y agoThat was news to me, although I guess I'm not surprised. It's frustratingly difficult to buy groceries at the supermarket without plastic.
- rwmj 4y agoWe 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!?!
- radu_floricica 4y agoThis is a very good time for this link: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental-impact https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental... (look at the last graph, with averages). 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?
- Mistletoe 4y agoThere 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.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoI thought the vast majority of plastic in the ocean was from fishing and developing countries?
- Mistletoe 4y agoI mean my understanding is a lot of it was our plastic recycling going there and being dumped in the ocean… https://www.treehugger.com/europe-s-plastic-recycling-is-getting-dumped-in-the-ocean-5070465 https://www.treehugger.com/europe-s-plastic-recycling-is-get...
- dr_dshiv 4y agoThat’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.” https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade
- hknmtt 4y agoWE ALREADY HAVE CELLOPHANE
- csande17 4y agoHuh, 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!
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago> But what if you could toss the whole package directly into the bowl with your boiling water? Then you'd have a hygiene code violation; the packaging is there for a reason. And what if the packaging gets moist? It's more likely than you think.
- rwmj 4y agoWe'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.
- jjk166 4y agoUnfortunately 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.