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One problem with polyester is the amount of microplastics which enter the water supply when washing them. It's an unacceptable amount.

cyberax 10mo ago
Polyester is biodegradable, albeit slowly.
- soulofmischief 10mo ago
  Citation needed.
  - sitharus 10mo ago
    Degradation Rates of Plastics in the Environment (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635) shows PET degrading very slowly in the environment. _Very_ slowly. Researchers have found bacteria that do degrade PET using esterases though: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020320997 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... So I guess technically it's biodegradable? Though as it's an energy source give bacteria a few hundred years or so.
  - cyberax 10mo ago
    "Polyesters" is a huge category. PET in plastic bottles is also a polyester, and it can persist for hundreds of years because it's typically in a highly crystalline form that resists fragmentation. I was talking about polyester fibers. They have multiple orders of magnitude higher surface-area-to-weight ratio. There are very few good studies of the degradation rate, and they typically focus on bulk products rather than particulates. So we have to rely on indirect evidence, the concentration of nanoplastics near polluted locations typically stays steady rather than keeps increasing. It means that it's in a dynamic equilibrium. Another data point is lignin. It's a bilogical polymer, but that is not biodegradable in bulk, unless you are a fungus. And fungi don't have some neat enzymes that can degrade it, they just blast it with peroxides. And yes, there are lignin nanoparticles and you can detect them in water. These nanoparticles also don't accumulate and they can be degraded by bacteria because of their high surface area. Even though bacteria can NOT degrade bulk lignin.
- copperx 10mo ago
  Everything is biodegradable, given enough time.
- _whiteCaps_ 10mo ago
  Unfortunately too slowly for salmon and other pollution sensitive species.
deleted 10mo ago
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cyberax 10mo ago

Polyester is biodegradable, albeit slowly.

soulofmischief 10mo ago
Citation needed.
- sitharus 10mo ago
  Degradation Rates of Plastics in the Environment (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635) shows PET degrading very slowly in the environment. _Very_ slowly. Researchers have found bacteria that do degrade PET using esterases though: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6359 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020320997 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... So I guess technically it's biodegradable? Though as it's an energy source give bacteria a few hundred years or so.
- cyberax 10mo ago
  "Polyesters" is a huge category. PET in plastic bottles is also a polyester, and it can persist for hundreds of years because it's typically in a highly crystalline form that resists fragmentation. I was talking about polyester fibers. They have multiple orders of magnitude higher surface-area-to-weight ratio. There are very few good studies of the degradation rate, and they typically focus on bulk products rather than particulates. So we have to rely on indirect evidence, the concentration of nanoplastics near polluted locations typically stays steady rather than keeps increasing. It means that it's in a dynamic equilibrium. Another data point is lignin. It's a bilogical polymer, but that is not biodegradable in bulk, unless you are a fungus. And fungi don't have some neat enzymes that can degrade it, they just blast it with peroxides. And yes, there are lignin nanoparticles and you can detect them in water. These nanoparticles also don't accumulate and they can be degraded by bacteria because of their high surface area. Even though bacteria can NOT degrade bulk lignin.
copperx 10mo ago
Everything is biodegradable, given enough time.
_whiteCaps_ 10mo ago
Unfortunately too slowly for salmon and other pollution sensitive species.

deleted 10mo ago

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