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.
MyPasswordSucks · 8h 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.
dpacmittal · 4h ago
Let's not forget it's strength to weight ratio and how incredibly cheap it is. A polythene bag having few grams of weight can easily carry a load of 5kg or more while costing only a few cents.
andrepd · 1m ago
Well the thing is that it does not cost a few cents. It costs a few cents to make and (say) 20x that to dispose of properly. Since the user only has to pay part (the smaller part) of it, then it looks cheap.
smolder · 3h ago
What's clear to me, at least, is that a few cents doesn't represent the actual cost. It's a shortcoming of our economics that we consider such a great and long lasting material so disposable.
grufkork · 3h ago
I like to put it as all the damage we're causing is just taking out a huge loan, and either we repay it on our own terms or mother nature is going to debt collect for us...
lmpdev · 1h ago
This is probably the most important comment ITT
The tricky part is how do we even begin to model that with a somewhat comprehensible parameter? Without near perfect traceability across all nations in the world, we can only use sledgehammer methods like a “plastic tax” - which you’ll find very difficult to pass outside of more developed jurisdictions like the EU
ozim · 2h ago
I think few cents do represent it. Production alone per piece is more like really small fraction of a cent.
card_zero · 1h ago
> super-easy to mold
Or "plastic".
paulmooreparks · 6h 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."
bccdee · 6h 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.
ghushn3 · 7h ago
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.
> 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.
That requires that people care enough to collect that material in order to have it transported to the facility that can degrade it. The amount of plastic in the environment indicates that this is clearly not the case.
diggan · 38m ago
> That requires that people care enough to collect that material in order to have it transported to the facility that can degrade it. The amount of plastic in the environment indicates that this is clearly not the case.
Or that governments care enough to create laws and incentives for people to collect it.
Besides, there are many places that don't have as much plastic as others in their environment, so clearly it's possible to avoid in some way. Have to figure out how and why, but I'm guessing the researchers kind of feel like that's outside the scope of their research.
KronisLV · 1h ago
Over here in Latvia they established a deposit system where drinks cost more to buy at the store but you get that money back (store credit, or you can just donate it) when you bring the bottles/cans to a drop off point.
I haven’t really tossed away a bottle/can in years. I mean, I didn’t really use to do that previously anyways, but now I don’t even throw them into the regular trash, instead collect them in a separate bag.
I’d say it’s all about some sort of an incentive.
diggan · 36m ago
> Over here in Latvia they established a deposit system where drinks cost more to buy at the store but you get that money back (store credit, or you can just donate it) when you bring the bottles/cans to a drop off point.
AKA "Container-deposit legislation" (or "Pant" as we call it in Sweden and maybe also Germany?). Seems to work very well, and you also have a ton of people collecting cans that others throw in the environment, as they'll get money for it.
Kind of wish we had it here in Spain too, as the environment and the sea ends up with a lot of cans and glass bottles. Seems like such an obvious idea to have nationwide.
2muchcoffeeman · 7h 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 · 7h 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.
rTX5CMRXIfFG · 5h ago
Yeah but lasting a thousand years isn't necessary for those properties. It's not even the case that all those properties are necessary for all actual cases of their use.
fastball · 4h ago
Which material has all the useful properties of plastic and doesn't last for an inconvenient amount of time?
thaumasiotes · 3h ago
> but lasting a thousand years isn't necessary for those properties
Yes, it is. Lasting for thousands of years is the same thing as (1) impermeability to microbes (mold / insects / etc...) plus (2) failure to react with local chemicals. Those two things are the things we want, and if you have them both, you last for thousands of years, because there's nothing to stop you from doing that.
jibal · 6h ago
You're just repeating yourself, while ignoring that your sweeping generalization has already been refuted.
fastball · 5h ago
I don't think so. I was clarifying my point which seemed misunderstood by 2muchcoffeeman and didn't contain much of a sweeping generalization (more a statement of fact about the nature of plastic).
'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 · 7h 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.
masklinn · 1h ago
> 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.
- any sort of housing window and display protection, I have at least half a dozen within easy reach not including actual computer displays
- transparent food packaging is important to both identify the product and ascertain its state (especially at the store e.g. berries)
- viewing liquid levels at a glance is extremely useful
verelo · 8h ago
It’s almost like we just gave up on making glass less breakable when we found plastic
nine_k · 8h 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 · 8h ago
Also needs to be robust to salt and acid, aluminum cans have a plastic lining.
kyriakos · 1h ago
Part of the reason that a lot of drinks in aluminium have short shelf life. Acidity eventually makes aluminium leak into the drink.
saagarjha · 1h ago
On a very long timeline, sure
thaumasiotes · 3h ago
More importantly, and unlike glass, if you do break plastic, it's not dangerous.
Henchman21 · 8h 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?
There’s quite a lot of packaging that’s mostly cardboard but with a transparent plastic window to see the product.
cbmuser · 4h ago
»We like plastic because it is lightweight and not biodegradable.«
Depends on the type of plastic used.
Cellophane is a plant-derived plastic that can be used for packaging and it’s biodegradable.
lucideer · 3h ago
We use plastic for a wide range of reasons depending on the application & one of them is transparency. The alternative in the case tends to be glass which ticks a lot of your boxes (rain proof, etc.) but is heavy & brittle.
It's not about finding a universal replacement, it's always going to be a multifaceted approach.
rTX5CMRXIfFG · 5h ago
> We like it because it lasts thousands of years.
Wrong. People only care for packaging to last before the contents expire, but beyond the expiry date nobody cares about the next thousand years that the packaging will last. And they will very much care when they start suffering the health consequences of garbage and microplastics leaking into their drinking water.
atoav · 1h ago
Ideal would be a material that has all the properties, but biodegrades after a reasonable period (what is reasonable depends on the usecase of course).
dyauspitr · 6h 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.
3cats-in-a-coat · 2h ago
There isn't one replacement for plastic. Hence also we can't expect every single replacement to address every single use of plastic. Transparent paper is fine.
littlestymaar · 3h ago
Singular "Plastic" doesn't exist, we use several hundreds of different plastics for many purpose, each of which having its own requirement (sometimes it's its lack of biodegradability, but sometimes it's its transparency, or its light weight, or its elasticity, etc.), each use case would need a totally different substitute.
In all cases, though, a key feature is that it can be synthesized at massive scale for cheap, and it's the hardest part when looking for substitutes.
LoveMortuus · 4h ago
Also something that doesn't slowly poison you over time like what plastics (microplastics) do with microplastics. There's almost no way to get rid of those from our body except breastfeeding, but in that case, it's actually even worse, since usually people don't breastfeed for fun.
cbmuser · 3h ago
No one was ever harmed by incorporating plastics. And id your body can’t make any use if it, it will leave your body through the digestive system.
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 · 8h 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.
Is this the paper, i wonder, that was used in old physical photo albums. Every alternate leaf was a translucent / see-through paper that would protect the photo print's surface and ink from getting fused to the previous page.
euroderf · 2h ago
Glassine has been around forever. Useful for philately!
iancmceachern · 4h ago
There are also transparent rolling papers
cbmuser · 3h ago
But Cellophane is already used for food packaging.
teleforce · 9h ago
Great summary of paper akin of TL;DR.
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 · 9h ago
The Wall Street Journal recently started putting a 3-bullet-point AI generated summary at the top of each story.
saagarjha · 1h ago
Huh, I somehow never made the connection to cellophane being cellulose-based. I just thought it was plastic…
90s_dev · 10h ago
I genuinely wonder if the Romans actually had peak technology all things considered & balanced.
phire · 8h 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 · 8h 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 · 7h 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 · 6h 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.
saagarjha · 1h ago
I'd take modern healthcare tbh
hollerith · 6h ago
Did the ancient Romans have transparent paper, celluloid or cellophane?
Just curious whether I'm missing some connection.
astrospective · 9h ago
Too much lead.
90s_dev · 9h 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 · 7h 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 · 6h 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 · 8h 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 · 11h 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 · 11h 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."
Leo-thorne · 52m ago
My mom’s been helping out at a small local shop, and they’ve been trying to move away from plastic packaging. They tried compostable films and recycled paper, but either the cost was too high or the materials just didn’t hold up well.
This transparent paper made from cellulose sounds really promising. If it can handle heat, looks good, and actually breaks down in the environment, that would be a big help for shops like theirs.
Has anyone here worked with this kind of material? I’d love to hear how it performs in real use, especially with things like liquids or anything sensitive to moisture.
pupppet · 11h 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 · 9h 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.
> Almost everything you sort out into a recycling bin gets dumped in the ocean
But the articles don't say that. They say that a lot of plastic is unsuitable for recycling and is therefore incinerated or dumped, like into a landfill or a big dirty pile of trash on the ground. Not one of the articles said that the plastic was being dumped into the ocean.
One of the articles makes an observation about beaches and ocean around one Cambodian recycling town covered with plastic trash. Certainly a careless and dirty operation there. But even that article doesn't claim that their modus operandi is to dump it into the ocean.
If those journalists had any evidence that ocean dumping was the goal, or even if they suspected it, then that would have been the highlight of the article and they would have said so explicitly. It would be a newsworthy scoop even.
samlinnfer · 24m ago
It's not about recycling, their regular garbage goes into the ocean too (after they dump it into their rivers).
james_marks · 10h ago
There are people working that angle as well[0], and they focus on prevention for this reason. We need all angles.
Its really hard to change people without using threats or force. Easier to change their environment.
mmooss · 8h 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 · 7h 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.
jibal · 5h ago
"People changing" and "changing people" are radically different things.
brookst · 8h ago
It’s usually easier to solve a technical problem than a societal one.
lisper · 11h ago
Environmentally-sensitive garbage disposal is expensive. Not everyone can afford it.
iszomer · 11h ago
IIRC, SK burns spent tires as a fuel source for their cement industry.
hippari2 · 9h 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 · 8h 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.
petesergeant · 6h ago
“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.
Never forget Govt's simultaneously started taxing us to use 'almost never degrading plastic bags' two years before announcing they can make plastic bags that degrade after 4 years. Without removing the aforementioned tax.
This isn't about the environment and never will be.
Ringz · 1h ago
Is it really biodegradable? Almost all varieties are not. They only fall apart in smaller plastic or need special heated environments. None of them will degrade if you simply throw them „into the woods“.
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 · 11h 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 · 10h ago
We need it to break down properly, or not at all.
stavros · 10h ago
But then your bottles would fall apart on the shelf because they degraded enough to get a hole in them.
jjulius · 10h ago
Oh well, at least the planet and its inhabitants would likely be better off.
saagarjha · 1h ago
Sure, but talk to anyone about paper straws and you will probably see the issue with this.
malux85 · 10h ago
Surely there's a gap that could be the sweet spot between "thousands of years" and a couple of years
stavros · 3h ago
Unfortunately, I think it's that either there's a microorganism that will eat your material, and you get a couple of years, or there's not, and you get thousands.
lodovic · 5h ago
A milk carton?
justsid · 3h ago
Most tetra pak like materials and even aluminum cans are actually lined with plastic. Plastic is the greatest material ever, right until it needs to be disposed and then suddenly the biggest upside becomes the biggest downside.
deadbabe · 10h 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.
Huxley1 · 4h ago
My mom’s been helping out at a small local shop, and they’ve been trying to move away from plastic packaging. They tried compostable films and recycled paper, but either the cost was too high or the materials just didn’t hold up well.
This transparent paper made from cellulose sounds really promising. If it can handle heat, looks good, and actually breaks down in the environment, that would be a big help for shops like theirs.
Has anyone here worked with this kind of material? I’d love to hear how it performs in real use, especially with things like liquids or anything sensitive to moisture.
smolder · 4h ago
I would like you to qualify "didn't hold up well". Can you explain how? Can we get more detail?
smolder · 5h ago
Plastics and other oil-derivative, crucial materials should be the main use of crude oil and methane, not energy. Save the oil to make things that don't have an easy replacement. Replace oil burning with solar, wind, nuclear, etc., and use the underground reserve of hydrocarbons for noble causes like medecine, or for the type of investments that add to the net good for our species.
1970-01-01 · 12h ago
The bag is good, the cup is good, but the straw is a terrible idea.
Brian_K_White · 12h 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 · 12h ago
Why? Will it get soggy like the regular paper straws?
aDyslecticCrow · 11h ago
If it's as they describe... it should not. so a good straw replacement.
9rx · 10h 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.
smolder · 4h ago
Transparent paper is kind of an old idea. Whether it is commercially viable is the important question.
JumpCrisscross · 10h 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?
bosky101 · 6h ago
Kudos, about time, Exciting news.
JBlue42 · 11h 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 · 10h 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 · 12h 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 · 12h 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 · 11h 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 · 11h 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 · 11h 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 · 10h ago
Oo! Very nice. I've updated my comment, as i stand corrected.
delibes · 11h 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 · 11h 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 · 11h ago
even if its viable, it would come down to cost
Affric · 11h ago
Progressively banning plastics from various applications would certainly help.
slt2021 · 10h ago
the cost can be managed by taxing bad plastic and providing incentives to good sustainable plastic, just like BEVs vs ICE
ekianjo · 6h ago
Since this comes from Japan before trying to convert people to use transparent paper that has half the carbon footprint of plastic, why not reducing the massive packaging waste in Japan where everything is packed into 10 layers of plastic for no good reason?
oddmiral · 3h ago
In recent news: Japanese scientists produce plastic which dissolves in seawater within 2 hours.
jona777than · 11h 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.
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.
The tricky part is how do we even begin to model that with a somewhat comprehensible parameter? Without near perfect traceability across all nations in the world, we can only use sledgehammer methods like a “plastic tax” - which you’ll find very difficult to pass outside of more developed jurisdictions like the EU
Or "plastic".
"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."
Plastics do a lot of things; no one material can replace them all. But this is certainly one meaningful niche of disposable plastics.
That requires that people care enough to collect that material in order to have it transported to the facility that can degrade it. The amount of plastic in the environment indicates that this is clearly not the case.
Or that governments care enough to create laws and incentives for people to collect it.
Besides, there are many places that don't have as much plastic as others in their environment, so clearly it's possible to avoid in some way. Have to figure out how and why, but I'm guessing the researchers kind of feel like that's outside the scope of their research.
I haven’t really tossed away a bottle/can in years. I mean, I didn’t really use to do that previously anyways, but now I don’t even throw them into the regular trash, instead collect them in a separate bag.
I’d say it’s all about some sort of an incentive.
AKA "Container-deposit legislation" (or "Pant" as we call it in Sweden and maybe also Germany?). Seems to work very well, and you also have a ton of people collecting cans that others throw in the environment, as they'll get money for it.
Kind of wish we had it here in Spain too, as the environment and the sea ends up with a lot of cans and glass bottles. Seems like such an obvious idea to have nationwide.
Yes, it is. Lasting for thousands of years is the same thing as (1) impermeability to microbes (mold / insects / etc...) plus (2) failure to react with local chemicals. Those two things are the things we want, and if you have them both, you last for thousands of years, because there's nothing to stop you from doing that.
- any sort of housing window and display protection, I have at least half a dozen within easy reach not including actual computer displays
- transparent food packaging is important to both identify the product and ascertain its state (especially at the store e.g. berries)
- viewing liquid levels at a glance is extremely useful
Depends on the type of plastic used.
Cellophane is a plant-derived plastic that can be used for packaging and it’s biodegradable.
It's not about finding a universal replacement, it's always going to be a multifaceted approach.
Wrong. People only care for packaging to last before the contents expire, but beyond the expiry date nobody cares about the next thousand years that the packaging will last. And they will very much care when they start suffering the health consequences of garbage and microplastics leaking into their drinking water.
In all cases, though, a key feature is that it can be synthesized at massive scale for cheap, and it's the hardest part when looking for substitutes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9819327/
Etc… just google microplastics.
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.
Just curious whether I'm missing some connection.
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This transparent paper made from cellulose sounds really promising. If it can handle heat, looks good, and actually breaks down in the environment, that would be a big help for shops like theirs.
Has anyone here worked with this kind of material? I’d love to hear how it performs in real use, especially with things like liquids or anything sensitive to moisture.
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...
But the articles don't say that. They say that a lot of plastic is unsuitable for recycling and is therefore incinerated or dumped, like into a landfill or a big dirty pile of trash on the ground. Not one of the articles said that the plastic was being dumped into the ocean.
One of the articles makes an observation about beaches and ocean around one Cambodian recycling town covered with plastic trash. Certainly a careless and dirty operation there. But even that article doesn't claim that their modus operandi is to dump it into the ocean.
If those journalists had any evidence that ocean dumping was the goal, or even if they suspected it, then that would have been the highlight of the article and they would have said so explicitly. It would be a newsworthy scoop even.
[0] https://theoceancleanup.com/
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.
The main issue of trash has always been separation.
This isn't about the environment and never will be.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
This transparent paper made from cellulose sounds really promising. If it can handle heat, looks good, and actually breaks down in the environment, that would be a big help for shops like theirs.
Has anyone here worked with this kind of material? I’d love to hear how it performs in real use, especially with things like liquids or anything sensitive to moisture.
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.