Transparency isn't the reason we use so much plastic. We like plastic because it is lightweight and not biodegradable. We like it because it lasts thousands of years. Because if it lasts thousands of years it will do a good job of storing your food products. Or it will stick around in various components without needing to worry about rain and such.
What we need to develop is something that doesn't degrade at all under most human living conditions, but does degrade rapidly if we expose it to some sort of not-common trigger, whether that is another chemical or temperature or pressure or whatever.
paulmooreparks · 13m ago
A use case is already stated in the article:
"So far, paper packs have been the most common alternatives to plastic containers. But business experts have pointed out that consumers are less willing to buy goods in paper packs because they cannot see the contents. Transparent paper could overcome this problem, but bringing the material to market will require factories with the technology to mass-produce it."
MyPasswordSucks · 2h ago
We also use it because it's super-easy to mold, and is incredibly suited to mass production. The ease with which it can be shaped might even be the single most compelling reason to go plastic.
Plastic takes the best aspects of wood (lightweight, cheap), ceramics (easy to shape, watertight), and metal (casual resiliency); and dodges some of the biggest issues with each (wood requires a lot of finishing and is very slow to shape industrially, ceramics tend to shatter, metal is comparatively expensive, prone to rust, and also electrically conductive). They're not perfect, but if you add up the stat points it's obvious why they're so prevalent.
bccdee · 20m ago
That's not entirely true. I throw away a lot of cardboard packaging with a plastic window glued into it. Obviously this can't replace all plastic, but it can certainly replace some.
Plastics do a lot of things; no one material can replace them all. But this is certainly one meaningful niche of disposable plastics.
2muchcoffeeman · 1h ago
THere’s a lot of single use plastics for packaging that something like this could replace. Like buying prepacked fruit. Your fruit isn’t lasting thousands of years. So your packaging doesn’t need to either.
fastball · 1h ago
The plastic doesn't need to last for thousands of years for our actual use, but the properties that make it last for thousands of years are also what make it desirable for our use: fully waterproof, impermeability to microbes, etc.
mjevans · 2h ago
Plastic likes:
'waterproof' (fluid proof for many things)
Difficult to shatter (drop safe-ish)
Shows stuff off 'nicely'
Priced inexpensively (damage to the commons is not factored in...)
fastball · 1h ago
Yep, plastic has a lot of benefits. But I genuinely don't think the translucency is that much of a selling point. If plastic could not be translucent and was always opaque, I think we would still use it for almost all of the same use-cases as we do today, on the back of durability + weight alone.
verelo · 2h ago
It’s almost like we just gave up on making glass less breakable when we found plastic
nine_k · 2h ago
A plastic bottle is not just less breakable. It's also way lighter weight than glass, and harder to dent and pierce than aluminum.
cma · 2h ago
Also needs to be robust to salt and acid, aluminum cans have a plastic lining.
Henchman21 · 2h ago
I'm haunted by a story I read once, about East German beer glasses that were unbreakable. They developed them because of a serious shortage of raw materials as I recall. I would be happy to buy two dozen and pass them on to my family when I die. But that's the problem, isn't it? The lack of sales. Just ask Pyrex, I guess?
Nobody likes plastic because it lasts "thousands of years". People care about storing food products well. If we can do that without lasting thousands of years that seems like a pretty good win.
Gigachad · 1h ago
There’s quite a lot of packaging that’s mostly cardboard but with a transparent plastic window to see the product.
dyauspitr · 5m ago
We would like it for the vast majority of cases if it lasted for ten years (or 50) and not a thousand. Why don’t we have plastic that degrades away safely over some timespan like that yet.
Cellophane meets 1 and 3 but is hard to be made thick. Paper satisfies 2 and 3 but is not transparent. Celluroid is not explicitly mentioned in the paper, but I gather it does not satisfy 3 since it's hardly pure-cellulose.
The main application target seems to be food packaging.
phire · 2h ago
We do have translucent paper. It's nowhere near transparent, but translucent enough to give you some idea about what's inside. I've seen it used in the packaging for a few products at my local supermarket.
If only AI/LLM can summarize most research papers like this correctly and intuitively I think most people will pay good money for it, I know I would.
bookofjoe · 2h ago
The Wall Street Journal recently started putting a 3-bullet-point AI generated summary at the top of each story.
90s_dev · 4h ago
I genuinely wonder if the Romans actually had peak technology all things considered & balanced.
phire · 2h ago
I have a hard time using "balanced" and Roman in the same sentence.
Maybe the technology was "balanced", but the society certainly wasn't. It relied on continual expansion and devolved from a republic into an empire along the way. When the empire couldn't expand anymore, it collapsed and fragmented.
I also don't think their technology level was stable. IMO, they were only about 200 years away from developing a useful steam engine and kicking off their own industrial revolution. They knew the principals, they even had toy steam engines. They were already using both water wheels and windmills to do work when available. They were just missing precision manufacturing techniques to make a steam engine that actually did useful work.
90s_dev · 2h ago
> They were just missing precision manufacturing techniques to make a steam engine that actually did useful work.
That's the point. They had sustainable and clean technology. It was a sweet spot.
phire · 40m ago
They were mining coal and using it for both heating and metal working.
They also deforested large sections of Europe for fuel (especially to make charcoal for smelting iron), building materials and to clear land for crops. They didn't really practice much in the way of sustainable forests, unless they ran into local shortages of fuel wood.
wredcoll · 25m ago
Aside from the, you know, literal slave labor required to power things, they also burnt down most of the trees within reach of the cities.
astrospective · 3h ago
Too much lead.
90s_dev · 2h ago
It actually wasn't poisonous given the circumstances.
Could you elaborate? Just because it was less poisonous than it could have been, does not make it non-poisonous.
90s_dev · 47m ago
I dunno I read it somewhere that some other thing in the pipes formed a protective layer that prevented the lead from actually seeping into the water or something
fuzzer371 · 17m ago
Same thing happened in Flint Michigan, the lead pipes weren't the issue; They stopped treating the water a certain way and the slight acidity in the water caused (iirc) some sort of calcium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate layer to be washed away until the acidic water started leaching lead into the water.
vkou · 2h ago
Given that their society only functioned through massive amounts of theft from their neigbhours and slave labor, that would be very unfortunate if true.
No comments yet
aDyslecticCrow · 5h ago
Sounds similar to cellophane. But the process to make it is very different. Maybe it has some new properties that cellophane doesn't.
ihodes · 5h ago
"(…) They can be used to make containers because they are thicker than conventional cellulose-based materials. The new material is expected to replace plastics for this purpose, as plastics are a source of ocean pollution."
pupppet · 5h ago
It’s funny how we’ve all just become desensitized to the idea that some countries simply dump their garbage in the ocean and rather than work on that problem, we work on creating better garbage.
fooker · 3h ago
> some countries simply dump their garbage in the ocean
And most other countries dump their garbage in these less fortunate countries for 'recycling'.
Can't really get mad at poor third world countries we have been using as dumpsters.
If you don't believe me or think this is hyperbole, no I'm being literal here. Almost everything you sort out into a recycling bin gets dumped in the the ocean somewhere far from you.
Its really hard to change people without using threats or force. Easier to change their environment.
mmooss · 2h ago
> Its really hard to change people without using threats or force.
People change all the time. We are much different than ~10 years ago, before the rise of the far-right in the West. We are much different than 100 years ago.
People get much more exercise, eat healthier, are better educated ... so much as changed. Another new thing is people love to embrace nihilism rather than hope and progress - almost nobody embraces the latter these days.
jmknoll · 40m ago
What makes you think that people eat healthier and get more exercise?
In the US at least, Obesity is on the rise, people eat more meat than ever before, and life expectancy is basically flat over the past decade.
james_marks · 4h ago
There are people working that angle as well[0], and they focus on prevention for this reason. We need all angles.
“some countries” is doing a lot of heavy work to say “basically the Philippines”, which is a gigantic outlier in output per capita and just also absolute volume. China and India produce quite a bit, but not compared to how many humans they have.
lisper · 5h ago
Environmentally-sensitive garbage disposal is expensive. Not everyone can afford it.
iszomer · 5h ago
IIRC, SK burns spent tires as a fuel source for their cement industry.
hippari2 · 3h ago
It is easier to process a single type trash. Home trash is where burning get pretty expensive because people put all sort of stuffs in there. And I am sure the energy is net negative to.
The main issue of trash has always been separation.
iszomer · 2h ago
Which also iirc Japan does very well. Sure, the power generated is connected to it's grid and it pales in comparison to their other forms of energy production but it is also a part of their waste management policy.
brookst · 2h ago
It’s usually easier to solve a technical problem than a societal one.
We need a new class of materials that have plastic like properties but don’t take thousands of years to degrade or are impossible to recycle.
SubiculumCode · 4h ago
I think that degradation of plastic is the larger concern. Storage of garbage is generally an overstated concern, while microplastic pollution clearly show the threat of plastics that break into millions of tiny pieces.[1] Stable plastics that last pose so many fewer problems when it comes to pollutants.
It would be incredible if they could make plastic that didn't break down. But given the history of plastics, I would have to be very convinced that whatever they do to it isn't making it terribly toxic in ways that we don't measure. I would rather ditch plastics for better materials than have to check that yet another new acronym isn't in my water bottle.
aDyslecticCrow · 4h ago
We need it to break down properly, or not at all.
stavros · 4h ago
But then your bottles would fall apart on the shelf because they degraded enough to get a hole in them.
jjulius · 4h ago
Oh well, at least the planet and its inhabitants would likely be better off.
malux85 · 4h ago
Surely there's a gap that could be the sweet spot between "thousands of years" and a couple of years
deadbabe · 3h ago
The problem is any idiot can make a bottle that lasts thousands of years. It takes an engineer to make a bottle that barely lasts a year.
1970-01-01 · 6h ago
The bag is good, the cup is good, but the straw is a terrible idea.
Brian_K_White · 5h ago
Why?
They say the physical properties are like polycarbonate: no problem there.
They don't say how fast it degrades in ideal conditions but do say it takes 4 months in poor conditions, and that it requires microbes not merely water, or oxygen or other chemistry or uv etc, but microbes: sounds like it won't be touched at all in your soda even after a week.
Where is the terrible part?
firtoz · 5h ago
Why? Will it get soggy like the regular paper straws?
aDyslecticCrow · 5h ago
If it's as they describe... it should not. so a good straw replacement.
9rx · 3h ago
If it is as described, won't it harm turtles in the same way plastic straws do? That is, after all, why paper straws became popular following that viral video that went around. Poor structural integrity was the desirable trait they offered.
JumpCrisscross · 4h ago
“The paper sheets become transparent because they are packed tightly with nanometer-scale (one 1-billionth of a meter) fibers. The concentration of these fibers allows light to pass straight through the sheets without experiencing diffusion.”
How do they orient them?
JBlue42 · 5h ago
Not a surprise given how everything in Japan is wrapped in plastic. Loved everything about visiting the place that was far ahead of the US except for this.
zdw · 4h ago
Apparently the total mass of plastic used in wrapping the same volume of goods is lower in japan than in other countries (using more bags, less hard shell packaging).
In Japan individual crackers are typically wrapped in plastic inside the package, possibly due to the high humidity, possibly for social reasons (or both). Gift packets of for example chocolate also always use individually packed pieces. In the grocery store, if you buy plastic-wrapped on-styrofoam fish or meat and some other foodstuff, the cashier will always put this in an additional plastic bag.
Eggs are packed in plastic (in my home country that would be cardboard).
And so on and so forth. We bring our own bags,typically, but there's just so much plastic..
giantg2 · 5h ago
This is probably like the transparent windows made of wood - the chemicals to make it aren't any better than the ones used to make plastic.
aDyslecticCrow · 5h ago
They briefly describe the process in the article, and very different from the "transparent wood" I think you are referring to. I'll try to summarise from my brief understanding.
- Transparent wood takes wood, dissolves the lignin (natural wood glue-ish) with a solvent, and replaces it with epoxy under pressure. It's a pain to make, but is very cool and preserves the wood fibre structure.
- This transparent paper involves dissolving very pure cellulose (long starch) and then allowing it to reconnect tightly (with heat) before drying. It appears to be composed primarily of cellulose at the end and exhibits plastic properties. I presume the chemicals change the cellulose properties to allow this.
"lithium bromide-water" is (apparently, I was corrected) not very toxic and lilley recycled in the process. If this can be scaled and the solvent process can be done safely, then its very clever. It's effectively plastic but using a more "natural" carbon chain, which nature has had a few million extra years to figure out how to break down.
They describe it as paper and compare it to polycarbonate... so my guess is that it is a bit brittle, and cannot nicely replace plastic wrap or plastic bags... but it has some nice properties to replace a group of plastics we don't have very good alternatives to. One open question I have is UV resistance. Most transparent plastics tend to become brittle over time... but I don't know my chemistry enough to know if cellulose has the same issue. Greenhouses would otherwise benefit from it (as they're often made from polycarbonate sheets rather than glass)
kurthr · 5h ago
I don't know why it "Sounds toxic as s*t". It's a reactive salt. LD50 is ~1gram so don't swallow or get it in your eyes or nose. It seems comparable in hazard to commonly available cleaning compounds like ammonia and bleach.
That doesn't make it safe, but it's not a crazy carcinogen or auto-immune risk, and it literally dissolves in water. It's present in all sea water ~0.1ppm so you can't escape it.
aDyslecticCrow · 5h ago
Bromine itself is very toxic, but it all depends on the dose and form (it's used as an anti-algae agent). The article doesn't mention the concentration or if it remains in the end product. I'm not a chemist though, most of my knowledge comes from nilered.
billyjmc · 5h ago
I’m a chemist. Bromine isn’t bromide, and lithium bromide is a simple nontoxic salt. If this is as simple as is described in the news article, then it’s likely a pretty “green” process overall.
aDyslecticCrow · 4h ago
Oo! Very nice. I've updated my comment, as i stand corrected.
delibes · 4h ago
That's a bit like chlorine gas is poisonous, but sodium chloride (salt) makes things tasty.
Highly different compounds, that just contain chlorine atoms.
Can you share what knowledge you have of the materials and/or process that implies this is likely the case?
fitsumbelay · 5h ago
hits all the marks for replacing plastic. curious how long it'll take before widespread adoption; my cynical assumption's that it'll be at least a decade. will be happy to be wrong ...
tonyhart7 · 5h ago
even if its viable, it would come down to cost
Affric · 4h ago
Progressively banning plastics from various applications would certainly help.
slt2021 · 4h ago
the cost can be managed by taxing bad plastic and providing incentives to good sustainable plastic, just like BEVs vs ICE
jona777than · 5h ago
On a more humorous note, this ought to make for an interesting store checkout experience. “Would you like paper or… paper?”
What we need to develop is something that doesn't degrade at all under most human living conditions, but does degrade rapidly if we expose it to some sort of not-common trigger, whether that is another chemical or temperature or pressure or whatever.
"So far, paper packs have been the most common alternatives to plastic containers. But business experts have pointed out that consumers are less willing to buy goods in paper packs because they cannot see the contents. Transparent paper could overcome this problem, but bringing the material to market will require factories with the technology to mass-produce it."
Plastic takes the best aspects of wood (lightweight, cheap), ceramics (easy to shape, watertight), and metal (casual resiliency); and dodges some of the biggest issues with each (wood requires a lot of finishing and is very slow to shape industrially, ceramics tend to shatter, metal is comparatively expensive, prone to rust, and also electrically conductive). They're not perfect, but if you add up the stat points it's obvious why they're so prevalent.
Plastics do a lot of things; no one material can replace them all. But this is certainly one meaningful niche of disposable plastics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads2426
Apparently they wanted to create a material that:
1. is transparent,
2. can be made thick enough,
3. and is purely cellulose-based.
Cellophane meets 1 and 3 but is hard to be made thick. Paper satisfies 2 and 3 but is not transparent. Celluroid is not explicitly mentioned in the paper, but I gather it does not satisfy 3 since it's hardly pure-cellulose.
The main application target seems to be food packaging.
I think it's Glassine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassine
If only AI/LLM can summarize most research papers like this correctly and intuitively I think most people will pay good money for it, I know I would.
Maybe the technology was "balanced", but the society certainly wasn't. It relied on continual expansion and devolved from a republic into an empire along the way. When the empire couldn't expand anymore, it collapsed and fragmented.
I also don't think their technology level was stable. IMO, they were only about 200 years away from developing a useful steam engine and kicking off their own industrial revolution. They knew the principals, they even had toy steam engines. They were already using both water wheels and windmills to do work when available. They were just missing precision manufacturing techniques to make a steam engine that actually did useful work.
That's the point. They had sustainable and clean technology. It was a sweet spot.
They also deforested large sections of Europe for fuel (especially to make charcoal for smelting iron), building materials and to clear land for crops. They didn't really practice much in the way of sustainable forests, unless they ran into local shortages of fuel wood.
No comments yet
And most other countries dump their garbage in these less fortunate countries for 'recycling'.
Can't really get mad at poor third world countries we have been using as dumpsters.
If you don't believe me or think this is hyperbole, no I'm being literal here. Almost everything you sort out into a recycling bin gets dumped in the the ocean somewhere far from you.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/31/waste-co...
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/03/rich-countri...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-pla...
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/industrialised-countries-are...
People change all the time. We are much different than ~10 years ago, before the rise of the far-right in the West. We are much different than 100 years ago.
People get much more exercise, eat healthier, are better educated ... so much as changed. Another new thing is people love to embrace nihilism rather than hope and progress - almost nobody embraces the latter these days.
In the US at least, Obesity is on the rise, people eat more meat than ever before, and life expectancy is basically flat over the past decade.
[0] https://theoceancleanup.com/
The main issue of trash has always been separation.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
They say the physical properties are like polycarbonate: no problem there.
They don't say how fast it degrades in ideal conditions but do say it takes 4 months in poor conditions, and that it requires microbes not merely water, or oxygen or other chemistry or uv etc, but microbes: sounds like it won't be touched at all in your soda even after a week.
Where is the terrible part?
How do they orient them?
Video on this, as well as how much is used as incinerator fuel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU6WogV6UEg
- Transparent wood takes wood, dissolves the lignin (natural wood glue-ish) with a solvent, and replaces it with epoxy under pressure. It's a pain to make, but is very cool and preserves the wood fibre structure.
- This transparent paper involves dissolving very pure cellulose (long starch) and then allowing it to reconnect tightly (with heat) before drying. It appears to be composed primarily of cellulose at the end and exhibits plastic properties. I presume the chemicals change the cellulose properties to allow this.
"lithium bromide-water" is (apparently, I was corrected) not very toxic and lilley recycled in the process. If this can be scaled and the solvent process can be done safely, then its very clever. It's effectively plastic but using a more "natural" carbon chain, which nature has had a few million extra years to figure out how to break down.
They describe it as paper and compare it to polycarbonate... so my guess is that it is a bit brittle, and cannot nicely replace plastic wrap or plastic bags... but it has some nice properties to replace a group of plastics we don't have very good alternatives to. One open question I have is UV resistance. Most transparent plastics tend to become brittle over time... but I don't know my chemistry enough to know if cellulose has the same issue. Greenhouses would otherwise benefit from it (as they're often made from polycarbonate sheets rather than glass)
That doesn't make it safe, but it's not a crazy carcinogen or auto-immune risk, and it literally dissolves in water. It's present in all sea water ~0.1ppm so you can't escape it.
Highly different compounds, that just contain chlorine atoms.