5 ms·
Something that only lasts 30 days is going to partially start breaking down on day 1, I don't think people want that touching their meat.
by peteradio 3y ago
Something that only lasts 30 days is going to partially start breaking down on day 1, I don't think people want that touching their meat.
- logtempo 3y agoAdjust the variable in consequence, we're talking about a fictional material. You're using a strawman there, just to be in contradiction.
- sph 3y agoJust brainstorming here: anything temperature-based? Starts degrading above 10C for example. In your fridge it's no problem, chuck it out of the window like a savage and it will eventually degrade, unless you live on the poles. Sounds like a good avenue for (organic) material science research.
- bluGill 3y agoDoes something like that exist? Can something like that exist? don't forget it needs to be food safe - including whatever it breaks down to, and whatever bacteria might grow on it - so long as the food itself is safe to eat. Materials science has come a long way, but some problems still are not solved and it isn't always clear if the problem can be solved.
- BurningFrog 3y agoWater ice fits the description, but it's hard to see how that would be practical.
- sph 3y agoWe need Ice 9: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine
- Projectiboga 3y agoOk 100, or 500, both way below the hundreds of years they now last.
- verisimi 3y agoYou know, this is simply not true. I have found old buried plastic bags, from supermarkets - I remember the bag style from just a few years ago. The bags had severely degraded. When I tried to pick one up, it fell apart into small pieces, what integrity it had was gone. I've had the same experience with bags left in lofts - they degrade. From my personal experience, I therefore assume that plastics already disintegrate after about 10 years, not 100 or 500 years, as you state.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoYou're just talking about a bag degrading into smaller and smaller plastic particles (microplastics) while the people above are talking about biodegrading into natural elements.
- verisimi 3y agoYou think I'm unfair in comparing a plastic bag to plastic packaging? If you follow this particular thread, they were talking about packaging.
- littlestymaar 3y agoNo, you're just confusing macroscopic level of degradation (the whole structure degrades) and microscopic degradation (molecules are being degraded). The problem with plastic is that while the macroscopic structure can be altered in just a few years (depending on the conditions), the resulting parts aren't being metabolized away by micro-organisms and they remain as small plastic chunks, and then micro-plastic, then nano plastic, until they eventually break down entirely after decades, which is very unlike what happens with what we call biodegradable materials.