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Corn-Based Plastic
SolemnDragon writes "CNN.com is offering up an article about the new corn-based plastic-like product being used at Wild Oats Natural Markets. The product looks like plastic, works like plastic... and then turns into compost. Dubbed the 'corn-tainer,' it's being used to serve foods, etc. Available only in the Pacific Northwest stores (of course) or you can make your own at home. And here's more info on Bio-plastic from MSU." Our older story.
It actually would be quite useful in a number of situations.
For paper let's consider the fact that not all paper is of the same grade. There is packaging paper products, crappy paper drink containers at movie places, writing paper, and toilet paper. I personally wouldn't want to be wiping with hemp paper as it's a bit rough, but for packaging paper and shaped paper drink holders it'd work great.
Some of the really great things about hemp is it doesn't leach minerals out of the ground at anywhere near the same rate cotton does, nor does it take anywhere near as long to grow as a tree. In fact, I may have heard it is the single fastest growing biomass plant in the world, though you may want to check me on that.
The thing about it's biomass is that it can be turned into biofuel. Not totally sure how, but I know the idea behind it is sound.
It's interesting to take a look at the prohibiton of hemp, which occured simultaneously with the prohibition on cannabis, and look at some of the people who contributed to it being made illegal. I don't recall all but I know Dow, some national wood producer, and some oil companies were involved. I think it's all detailed in the book "The Emperor Wears no Clothes" by Jack Hanna or something like that.
My favorite website for news on prohibition, general civil liberties abuse, and marijuana is www.marijuana.com
Glass is easily recyclable though. You can crush it up into course particals and use it as aggregate in concrete and asphalt paving, or just melt it down and make new things out of it.
Plastic is a bit trickier, mainly because there's so many different types of plastic, it makes sorting a nightmare. Some products even use 2 or 3 different types of plastic in one unit! (eg: Tic-Tac dispenser uses a polystyrene container and a polypropylene lid)
different "types" of glass are mostly just heat treatments. eg: tempered/safety glass.
A plastic that dissolves in a special chemical would make it easier, especially if that chemical could be retreived after use. Dump all the plastic garbage in a big pot, add chemical, dissolve type X plastic, drain chemical and recover, add different chemical to dissolve type Y plastic, repeat...
I've also seen plastics (especially expanded polystyrene, like coffee cups) that have glucose in their polymer chains, which means bacteria aide in decomposing the material while it's in the landfill. No idea what happened to this stuff though...
=Smidge=
Huge yields per acre without having to use massive amounts of fertiliser. Food, fuel, fabric,other fiber products,and plastics. Large variety of useful products from the same plant. Requires very little care. When I was a kid, there were still a lot of wild patches left over from world war 2, when they did an emergency "grow this stuff now" campaign after the phillipines fell to the japanese. No one thought about smoking it though, but I remember playing in one patch that was several acres, stuff was like 15 feet high or something, big plants.
Farmers could even afford to only harvest half the plant, plow the remainder back under, thereby making your soil every year better, not more depleted, by adding more carbon back into the surface layer.
It scares the monopolists. Places where it's legal have zero problems with it, none.
Nope, government is a 100% complete %^&*&**( about it, too much money to be made keeping it illegal and keeping the drug war hype going, shoot, that was the really big police state push, they got everyone to accept all this gestapo SWAT team crap and whatnot with that artifical "threat". I mean, c'mon now, pothead terrorists? People who sit around and eat and listen to records? (well, that's what I saw in the olden days, maybe it's different now) And all the useful stuff you can get from it besides psychoactive? It's a joke, government is out to lunch on it, but, they dig those billions they make on the side and they get to build prisons and have new agencies and use up all that po-leece equipment they have kicking around the po-leece station.....
My take is, God got all these things, they all got a use, we get to use them, use the planet, plus we are supposed to be neat, sorta take care of things too, there's our ecological balance idea. Makes sense to me.. We may not know WHAT some things are useful for yet-like chiggers, wazzup with them things?- but, everything is useful, and no government should say "no you don't", that's just bogus.
couple of years now Earthshell has been making biodegradable containers for a while, McDonalds already uses them. And so does the National Park Service.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
In case you're wondering why plastic is bad, visit the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. They have done cruises into the Pacific Ocean and found tiny pieces of plastic that outnumber zooplankton 6 to 1. Plastic "nurdles" or little unprocessed beads of plastic are the number 1 beach polluter in southern California. They sorb hydrophobic toxins (DDT, PCBs and the like) and then poison the critters that eat them.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
The short answer to your question is... it depends.
Depending on the final processing of the PLA pellets, the time frame/conditions necessary for decomposition can vary greatly (e.g. amorphous vs. crystallized pellets, additives used). It's my understanding that PLA can even be formulated to last as long as "traditional" plastics.
I was involved with the engineering and startup of the Cargill Dow PLA facility in Blair in 2001-2002. I had several opportunities to talk personally with some of the research chemists who developed the product formulations and perfected the manufacturing process.
Disclamer: IAAMS (I Am A Materials Scientist)
Pretty much, yes. Except that I think sand is crystalline and they add some stuff (soda, lime, etc) to make it melt easier. Anything ceramic (and that includes glass), is basically a synthetic rock. Why would you want it to degrade? What is glass poisoning? Anyway, glass is recycled a lot easier than plastic, and recycling is preferable to decay. Just sort it by color and melt it down.
Actually I think aluminum takes longer to decay than glass does because aluminum forms a protective oxide on the surface that is not as water sensitive as silica (glass) is. Even so, aluminum is great because it is actually profitable to recycle aluminum since it costs a lot less to melt down old aluminum than it does to refine new aluminum from bauxite.
The other point is that neither aluminum nor glass produces anything toxic as they degrade. Many plastics release nasty toxic compounds as they degrade and so you don't really want them to break down.
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The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.