I am curious at how many of these pointless reports are going to be made. I have seen countless reports like this and at the end of the day we are drowning in plastic.
Every year there is a new article about a scientist finding a new bacteria, funghi worm or other kind of species that can digest plastic. However they work only in perfect lab condition and on smaller scale. Sadly there is no real world usage yet.
I think the grand irony about this thing is that if there really was a bacteria that could eat away it plastic there would be a mass panic – "new dangerous bacteria found eating away at plastic containers, all packaging rotting on store shelves!"
the solutions already exist, the customer & industry just doesnt want to adapt
What choice does the customer really have? Plastic is a component of nearly everything that isn’t food and packaging for nearly everything.
Looking forward to having that in my balls as well as microplastics
damn imagine how cool it’ll be if your balls become transparent
I’m skeptical of this for two reasons.
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The thing that makes plastic as a building material so useful is that it takes forever to degrade. Biodegradable building materials seems like it would be counterproductive and make the problem worse, not better.
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So far, every time some new variety of biodegradable plastic comes along, it turns out to be a big fat lie.
You realize we still use wood for most housing frames, right? Wood is biodegradable.
The framing gets sealed and protected from moisture. It is not exposed to the outside. Exterior exposed wood is either pressure treated to resist rot, is a species that is naturally rot resistant, or it is painted.
Remember, the article is talking about altering wood to be both transparent and biodegradable. That sounds like a window to me. That is a role that is currently filled with either glass or plastic. You would not choose a biodegradable material for exterior use and most windows are used on the outside of a structure.
Biodegradable just means you protect it just like we protect current biodegradable materials. But your #2 stands, the research is great but until I see it in production or on a shelf for sale, it’s just research.
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I’m gonna build a clear house like that to retire in just to make sure nobody buys any lots within viewing distance of my saggy old man balls.
Don’t talk to me until it’s transparent aluminum
Vacuum chamber transparent wood filled with resin. Ok yeah sure that’ll “replace plastics”
If you’d like a real demo of what this article is talking about check out this NileRed video
So far theres only 2 or 3 implementations of this and none of them biodegradable. In fact it expends biodegradable wood to make a non biodegradable material. Plus it just sucks flat out. Not a single implementation is suitable for production.
From the article it does sound like this one may actually be biodegradable, the other implementations I’ve seen involve stripping lignin from the wood and impregnating it with resin, which all hair-splitting aside is basically plastic with extra steps. This is apparently using egg whites and some kind of rice extract instead of resin, so I don’t see any reason this shouldn’t be biodegradable.
Suitability for production and practical applications remain to be seen though.
