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It’s not necessarily only good news. The golden age of plastic that we live in allows for food packaging that cannot be penetrated by microorganisms, which in
by lynguist 2y ago
It’s not necessarily only good news.
The golden age of plastic that we live in allows for food packaging that cannot be penetrated by microorganisms, which in turn increases shelf life of some produce from like half a week to multiple weeks.
Once there are more such microorganisms in the next one hundred years we might have problems packaging our food.
And plastic is in essence a multi-step “life process” of crude oil: Instead of incinerating heating oil for our houses, plastic lives a first life as packaging, and then gets incinerated and provides heat over communal heating – ideally.
Of course, the problem is when it ends up in the water instead of being burned.
- mibsl 2y agoThere is still glass (and silicone?).
- xxs 2y agoglass is a lot heavier and way more expensive (glass is made out of silicon). There are a lot of different types of plastics the common ones use in packaging are LE-PE (light density polyethylene) and PP (polypropylene). They are both thermoplastic, they melt then heated. Silicone is also a form of plastic, it's thermoset (it chars effectively and it doesn't melt) - and it's awfully expensive. There are other plastic, e.g. nylon (PA6) that are still expensive but much cheaper than silicone.
- mrob 2y agoSilicone rubber has high gas permeability. This makes it good for contact lenses, but bad for food packaging.
- konschubert 2y ago> the problem is when it ends up in the water instead of being burned And that is entirely a question of waste management. The plastic straw that the EU just outlawed would never have ended up in the ocean. Meanwhile, plastic gets dumped into rivers by the truckloads - outside the EU.
- scrollaway 2y agoI swear the “plastic straw” argument is the absolute literal straw man argument. The EU didn’t outlaw “plastic straws”, it outlawed a range of things, one of which is the plastic straw. But then why do plastic straws always come up? Because this is also in response to a video of a turtle in pain with a plastic straw up its nose (so yes it did end up in the ocean). And creating less single use products is a step of waste management by the way. Now I’m not particularly in favour of paper straws, but bamboo straws have taken off as a replacement and that’s a rather good thing I would say. But again this is only about straws because you made it about straws. The same applies to many other single use plastics.
- exe34 2y agoIf you left his plastic straw alone, he wouldn't have to make it about straws, would he? Now all he has is a soggy paper straw that he got from a plastic wrapping.
- sva_ 2y ago> so yes it did end up in the ocean It was a European plastic straw? Was there an address on it, or how can you tell? The point the person you responded to was making wasn't about plastic straws, but rather about the fact that European trash almost never lands in the ocean: https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
- konschubert 2y agoIt’s not a strawman because the EU actually did rule out plastic straws. And as a parent, I can assure you that I get reminded of this on a weekly basis.
- Viliam1234 2y agoAs a parent in EU, I bought the reusable silicone straws, those are available and kids don't mind.
- cc81 2y ago
- bell-cot 2y agoUnless your kitchen is flooded, plastic food packaging generally doesn't face the sort of warm, wet environments needed for most fungi and microorganisms to grow. (The sterilized and/or nutrient-deficient insides of food packaging doesn't count.) Marine uses of plastic (fishing nets, ropes, swimwear, buoys, etc.) seem likely to be impacted first. Along with infrastructure (sump pumps, farm irrigation equipment, ...). Then general outdoor uses.
- sva_ 2y agoWhat if you live in a humid, warm, tropical environment?
- bell-cot 2y agoDo things which old-fashioned fungi can break down, given time and water - physical books, wood furniture, natural fiber clothing - need any special treatments to survive in your environment? Figure that these plastic-rotting fungi won't be all that much different from the ones you're familiar with. This is not some SciFi "and the Nanotech Gray Goo ate the entire earth in a week" story.
- bregma 2y ago> This is not some SciFi "and the Nanotech Gray Goo ate the entire earth in a week" story. Not yet.
- bell-cot 2y ago"Life Finds a Way, Inc." has had a planet-sized laboratory, running its Natural Mutation Engine 24x7x365, for a billion-ish years now. But no Gray Goo has actually evolved, and taken over the Earth. Perhaps, "Gray Goo" is just another cool-sounding trope, and not a real-world possibility?
- immibis 2y agoGrey Goo has evolved in many incarnations. First was "unicellular life" edition. Most recently the planet has been taken over by "humans".
- kennethwolters 2y agoIMO petroleum scattering around earth as CO2 damages earth less than petroleum scattering around earth as a petroleum-based solid. Both is bad tho - can't mix layers that are not meant to meet.
- quonn 2y ago> gets incinerated and provides heat over communal heating – ideally. How is it ideal to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere even further?
- bsza 2y agoSo does any microorganism that can break down plastic, but without heating your home.
- adwn 2y agoPresumably OP meant that if plastics are incinerated anyway, it's better to get some additional use out of that.
- zo1 2y agoIf it's a controlled incineration with the appropriate filters and capture mechanisms, I doubt it's that bad.
- mrguyorama 2y agoOnly 6% of the world's petrochemical usage is to make plastic. If we decarbonize everything else but merely burn every gram of plastic we produce, that's a win, both from a climate change perspective and from a plastic waste perspective. Proper incineration is probably the most reliable, most effective way to deal with human waste. Well made and managed landfills are also perfectly capable of dealing with human waste, but they are a long term project, and there's a lot of time for a dumb management or politician to decide you don't need to fund it as well and now a hundred years of hard work to protect the environment goes down the drain when your now improperly managed landfill is basically a superfund site. There's less chance for one idiot to do long term damage with incineration.
- Gravityloss 2y agoWe can then make the packaging out of nanodiamond film. Eat that, fungus! 100 years later the last organism on the planet dies, suffocating under nanodiamond film...
- iamgopal 2y agoaluminium is the best choice for packaging, for most food products.