Developed by researchers from China's Northeast Forestry University, the bamboo plastic can biodegrade in soil within 50 days and offers a pathway towards sustainable plastic alternatives.
Well yea, but they claim the point is that it’s not going to need to end up in landfills because it biodegrades. Meaning at best it’s carbon neutral, but that’s unlikely unless only renewable energy is used it produce it in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, it sounds miles better for the earth than making more microplastics, but it’s not much more than that, and not some kind of panacea.
but they claim the point is that it’s not going to need to end up in landfills
No they didn’t. They claimed it is biodegradable. It can be composted if your local trash collection service separates garbage that way, but most don’t. Just because it’s biodegradable doesn’t mean you can just chuck it outside
I didn’t mean to imply chucking it outside was the plan, but I do have a compost pile for food scraps and from what I’ve read it’s better for methane production to compost locally than to add biodegradable materials to landfills. So presumably the idea with creating this type of plastic is to reduce landfill usage as well.
Isn’t the big excitement that this plastic can biodegrade in relatively normal soil conditions? As opposed to the industrial composting facilities that are necessary for PLA and other corn based plastics?
if it enters eco system back, its biodegradation. more technically, biodegradation just means breaking polymers by biological processes. most of the times, it either means hydrolysis (usually breaking ester/amide linkages) or oxidation (so producing acid from alcohol, or producing co2 in end). all carbon in body “eventually” becomes co2, so it is not a problem, purely biological means of co2 production are usually not that scary.
Regardless of whether or not it truly biodegradable, switching from oil to a plant based plastic is a carbon sink.
I’d imagine it’s also better than having microplastics in my balls. Bamboo polymers in the brain sounds less threatening.
Plus if it biodegrades in 300 years that’s still way better than what we are doing
Beats using oil, agreed, but plastic in our bodies is probably still very bad even if it’s plant based.
Even better is to switch to glass and paper
Isn’t it only a carbon sink if you keep microbes from digesting it?
Is there a biodegradation of it that doesn’t release co2?
If it gets incorporated into the soil then some will stay there. Plus many landfill designs prevent decomposition entirely
Well yea, but they claim the point is that it’s not going to need to end up in landfills because it biodegrades. Meaning at best it’s carbon neutral, but that’s unlikely unless only renewable energy is used it produce it in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, it sounds miles better for the earth than making more microplastics, but it’s not much more than that, and not some kind of panacea.
No they didn’t. They claimed it is biodegradable. It can be composted if your local trash collection service separates garbage that way, but most don’t. Just because it’s biodegradable doesn’t mean you can just chuck it outside
I didn’t mean to imply chucking it outside was the plan, but I do have a compost pile for food scraps and from what I’ve read it’s better for methane production to compost locally than to add biodegradable materials to landfills. So presumably the idea with creating this type of plastic is to reduce landfill usage as well.
Isn’t the big excitement that this plastic can biodegrade in relatively normal soil conditions? As opposed to the industrial composting facilities that are necessary for PLA and other corn based plastics?
if it enters eco system back, its biodegradation. more technically, biodegradation just means breaking polymers by biological processes. most of the times, it either means hydrolysis (usually breaking ester/amide linkages) or oxidation (so producing acid from alcohol, or producing co2 in end). all carbon in body “eventually” becomes co2, so it is not a problem, purely biological means of co2 production are usually not that scary.