You Gonna Eat That? It Could Become Plastic

Kaz Riprock writes "Jian Yu and associates at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute have been working on a system to convert food waste into plastic polymers. There is a CNN article that gives an overview of the process. More information on the anaerobic acidogenesis and aerobic synthesis at Dr. Yu's page at HNEI. This could be a really good step in the right direction, assuming it provides a cheaper source of plastic than current methods (to be accepted and highly regarded by the plastic industry)."

Comments

Biodegradable plastic from foodstuffs.

[Xner]

The first time I heard of biodegradable pastics manufactured from things usually regarded as food was in the late 1980s.
The Italian company Montedison had developed a compound from corn that they called Mater-Bi, and you could get a watch made out of the stuff with the italian version of the mickey mouse magazine.

The only practical applications that I have seen so far are things like this bio-degradable bag, for groceries and waste disposal.

Nice, but still missing something.....

[RyoSaeba]

Sounds nice, but they aren't addressing the main trouble: the overuse of plastic everywhere !!
Just do a little experiment: during a full week, do your shopping as usual, and pay attention to all plastic stuff you trash immediately after purchase. Figure you really needed how much of all that plastic ?
I'm pretty sure plastic use could be reduced drastically in certain fields, before even thinking of making it cheaper....

save some time

[Hubert_Shrump]

In the case of Moon Pies, you can begin milling / molding operations immediately.

Plastic is already made of waste...

[Ashurbanipal]

...since it's mostly produced from byproducts of oil refining.

Unless you're talking about the body-panels on your Trabant, which also include agricultural waste.

Bravo for pure research!

So remember, kids...

[VikingBerserker]

Finish everything on your plate like your mother told you. There are plenty of kids in desperate need of plastics in China.

Nope -- we use too much plastic

[upper]

Plastic is a useful material, and there are times when it is a better choice than anything else. But an awful lot of plastic used today isn't necessary. Consider a typical plastic toy for a preschooler. Plastic is often a good choice for the toy itself -- you can make odd shapes easily, and the result can be smooth, rugged, and rustproof with no paint to put on or chip/wear off. But when you buy it, it's nested in a plastic box-filler, in a box which is shrink-wrapped, and you take it out of the store in a plastic bag. That's four layers of packaging, three of them plastic. One of the layers may be necessary, but only if there are multiple pieces.

Furthermore, plastic is only "easily and cheaply recycleable" if you leave a bunch of things out of the numbers:

• Only PETE (#1) and HDPE (#2) are recycled in any volume; other plastics are almost completely burned or landfilled.
  
• Recycled plastic bottles aren't made into new plastic bottles. They're made into things like "plastic lumber" and carpets. Then they're landfilled. So much for repeated use.
  
• Cleaning and de-labeling a plastic bottle isn't usually a big deal -- but do you know how hard it is to wash out a thin plastic bag? How about separating the plastic in a bubble-pack from the paper?
  
• Because beverage bottles are low density (i.e. very bulky for their weight) they are a nuisance to transport. The truck fuel used transporting them isn't trivial.
  

Plastic recycling is a sham. I do it, because it might someday evolve into something real, and because twice through is better than once through. But mostly I try to buy less plastic packaging.

Here's a novel idea...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Instead of turning leftover food into plastic, how about using it to feed people?

Organizations like Second Harvest already exist. They need not only food but also donations of time and talent or money. Check them out!

Re:Here's a novel idea...

[Kaz Riprock]

Many restaurants and caterers do not give away their leftovers because of the liability if someone were to eat something that had been around for the day and gone bad or in any other way gotten ill from the food.

My brother organized with a local soup kitchen to receive leftovers from a catering business he worked for, and when management found out, they stopped it. Especially with catering, you don't know who or what touched the food once it's put out.

Good idea...and I think it's still manageable in some situations, but a lot of the food industry shies from doing this for this reason.

Since when is plastic a problem?

[k98sven]

People point out plastic as an environmental problem because it is a cheap material,
often used in cheap (and sometimes, unneccesary) products.

Simply put: Plastic has low status and appeal.
And that's why it is an ideal target as an environmental problem.

Now I'm not denying that plastic *is* a problem, especially in landfills, where it degrades slowly.
However, if you burn it, that is a different matter.
Burning plastic gives you somewhere around 80-90% of the energy that burning the oil that it
took to make plastic, in the meanwhile the plastic has had an entire lifetime of practical use.

Somewhere around 1% of the worlds oil is used to make plastic, the rest?
It just gets burned up.

As I said, it is a problem, but it is NOT a major concern,
not when we still have oil power plants. (and SUV:s!)

(And if you ask me, this bad understanding of priority is one of
the enviromentalists' big problems)