"Liquid Wood" a Contender To Replace Plastic

Ostracus recommends a Christian Science Monitor piece on the 40-year quest to find a replacement for non-biodegradable plastic. One candidate, written off 20 years back but now developed to the point of practicality, is a formulation based on the lignin found in wood. And it turns out there is another strong environmental reason to put lignin to use in this way: burning it, which is its common fate today, releases the carbon dioxide that trees had sequestered. "Almost 40 years ago, American scientists took their first steps in a quest to break the world's dependence on plastics. But in those four decades, plastic products have become so cheap and durable that not even the forces of nature seem able to stop them. A soupy expanse of plastic waste — too tough for bacteria to break down — now covers an estimated 1 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. ...[R]esearchers started hunting for a substitute for plastic's main ingredient, petroleum. They wanted something renewable, biodegradable, and abundant enough to be inexpensive."

Comments

Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is like calling ethanol "liquid grain." There's a big difference between being derived from a given substance and having the properties of that substance.

Not that this isn't nice and all, but picking science fiction-ish titles for things keeps you from being taken seriously.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[X0563511]

The CO2 that comes from plastic, was pulled from the ground. Without us, it would have stayed there, for possibly an extremely long time.

The CO2 that comes from trees, was already in the air, and only was temporarily pulled out into the tree. On the tree's death, the CO2 would have released (as it rotted, or burned, depending).

So, while looking at the small picture, it's no better. But, zooming out to the big picture, it's a world better.