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A Paper Alloy To Replace Plastic Cases
xwwt writes "In response to a paper by Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, PEGA Design & Engineering has developed a new product that is intended to replace plastic shell material in computer equipment and electronics. The product contains a combination of paper and polypropylene (PP) which aids in recycling efforts and is intended to keep non-recyclable materials out of landfills. The PP should break down in sunlight and can be reclaimed. There is concern that polypropylene cannot be separated from the paper fiber and brings into question how the material will be recycled. As poster Paul Davis points out, it might have been better to use polylactic acid. Ultimately, it raises the question: is this truly a recyclable material?"
The PP should break down in sunlight and can be reclaimed.
Well, it did for a while.
Have gnu, will travel.
Keep out of direct sunlight, product may disintegrate
Glass
They will just protest even more claiming that those electronics are "made of dead trees".
Doesn't greenpeace like whine and cry over the amount of paper products we use? And let's not forget we have more forest here in north america, and we grow trees for pulping and lumbering just for that purpose anyway. But, considering the amount of anti-industrial, anti-progress, lets move society back in time crap that comes out of them anymore. People should just ignore them as the special interest group that they are.
Besides, the only real reason why we use plastic is because it's durable, lightweight and cheap. If we had a metal that was durable and light and cheap we'd use that too.
Om, nomnomnom...
Apparently that breaks down in the presense of oxygen. You know, like anywhere in earths oceans and atmosphere...
I'm not a chemist, but this sounds like one of those substances that'll degrade before it should, causing premature failure. plastic has gotten cheap and unreliable enough these days that I wonder if any increased recyclability is being offset by more products being thrown away due to premature breakage. perhaps it's anecdotal, but around the early 1990s, I noticed plastics getting lighter and more brittle, and larger products made with them had structural problems compared with their predecessors. examples coming to mind include kids toys, household appliances, automotive components, and personal electronics.
Even if it is a good idea as a case material(which isn't entirely clear, that plastic isn't going to be any more fun to recycle because of the tree guts mixed in, and the tree guts aren't going to be any more biodegradeable for the plastic encasing them, and any pigments, release agents, flame retardants, and other miscellanious additives aren't going to be any friendlier than they were in the usual ABS or polycarbonate...), the billing on the website as "the solution to e-waste" seems deeply overblown.
Case plastics aren't made of bunnies and happy thoughts, true, and mixed plastics are often not recycled(and if they are, issues like the difficulty of getting the color of the recycled material right out of an already-pigmented feedstock often consign the recycled material to low-value applications); but much of the really nasty stuff is happening on the circuit boards, and in their manufacture, not in the case. Particularly for a portable, where the case is vital to protecting the guts, and keeping the machine from creaking and generally falling to bits, the durability of the case is a major factor in how many years of use you get from the device. It seems like compromising on the case, to make it incrementally less unpleasant, is a bit of a false economy if it decreases the service life of the nastier(and more expensive) components inside.
A long time ago, during a more optimistic time when we dreamt of jet packs and lunar colonies (no,not by sacrifing the rest of the economy Newt Gingrich style) recycling wasn't going to be a problem.
Just drop waste into a plasma torch; everything would be reduced to "indivisible" atoms (yes I know that's what the word atom means).
I guess that particular dream vanished with the electric power from nuclear reactors that would be "too cheap to meter".
Anyway, not complaining too much. The past didn't see our future filled with fun handheld gadgets and the Internet. And who knows, maybe Siri will have a baby with Watson. (We should name him HAL). We also don't have nukes in low earth orbit ready to finish off the human race in a few minutes. Still, even though renewables will probably keep us warm in the winter and cool in the hotter summers, it's not clear that we'll have really high intensity power sources to squander, I mean use, anytime soon. I mean nuclear fusion is 20 years away and power from satellites even further.
Let's just hope it doesn't get as bad as in "The Windup Girl".
> ...designed to fail?
That was "planned obsiolescence"[1]. It was evil. This is "biodegradeability". It is "Green". You are supposed to want your things to rot and fall apart. Creates jobs, you see. Buying stuff that is durable and using it until it wears out is what old people do. After all, you have to throw your 'pod away and buy the new model ever six months anyway, right?
[1] Not really, but that's what the popular press redfined it as.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Will this laptop have a sunlight readable screen?
The PP should break down in sunlight and can be reclaimed.
Well, it did for a while.
And it won't have any sunlight in the landfill so it won't degrade very well? I thought one problem with landfills is that things that should degrade do not due to a lack of sunlight, oxygen, etc. IIRC some researchers have dug around in landfills from the 40s and 50s and found well preserved newspapers and other theoretical degradables. On the other hand some landfills are producing enough methane to make capture economical. Is it a soil thing? Breathable/permeable vs something more impenetrable?
Sometimes, computers can get pretty warm.... and paper doesn't exactly have a very high point of combustion. How flammable is this stuff?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's more steampunk than cyberpunk, ....
You're right, I stand corrected, thank you.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
What does that even mean?
"Trully recyclable" is a typo, what they mean is that some materials can be reused, infinitely and economically for the same purpose. Examples would be copper or aluminum. Many materials are not recyclable, but they are downcyclable which means that every time you reclaim them the end product is a raw material for a lower grade product. Water Bottles for example get downcycled into lower grade packaging which in turn gets downcycled into garden furniture which gets downcycled into concrete supplements. Plastic is probably one of the most serious and damaging pollutants in the modern world. The oceans are full of it and it clogs up beaches around the world in enormous quantities. Finding a substitute that is either biodegradable or truly recyclable would be very important. But then of course you already knew that, you just couldn't resist letting out your inner spelling nazi. Nevertheless, thank you for this opportunity, it's been fun treating you like an idiot.
make it out of chocolate and everyone will want it and have to buy new ones regularly.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
It is our God-given right to throw plastic away. What kind of America would this be if I couldn't just chuck my non-biodegradable products into the nearest ditch!
Quit your social engineering. What are you, some sort of communist?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Plastic is truly recyclable. It is just a lot cheaper to pump new oil out of the ground than to properly separate out the hydrocarbons. See also monomer recycling
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Only if people stop burying it in landfills.
OTOH Most of what we know about ancient people is by digging through their trash.
Well, it's my 'God Given Right', to buy stuff that doesn't break, not ever. Buy it once, last a lifetime.
Fuck recyclable, give me government mandated, cut the testicles off the manufacturing executives, life time warranties.
Let's see evolution in action, want shoddy products out of the market, let's remove the evolutionary opportunities of people who make shoddy products.
Last a lifetime, don't need no recycling, we'll have a whole lot less rubbish to deal with. For you recyclers I will accept the compulsory recycling of packaging of life time warranty products. Now that's from the gut grump old man thinking ;D.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Yup. And what it is is yet another idea sold to us using guilt and shame. Our inventions are ruining the environment, poisoning the earth, bringing us ever closer to disaster---and we're horrible, horrible people for it, they say. In order to feel good about ourselves and atone for our sins we need to be ashamed of ourselves and what we create, they say. And by sacrificing our worldly creations and making our lives more difficult we can make things better, they say. And who are "they"? Businessmen peddling "green" scams and politicians peddling new regulations, new taxes, new policies---people who will gain more power, more control, of us, and our wealth.
Does this story sound familiar?
Sorry, environmentalists, but if I wanted to feel good about myself by feeling bad about myself I'd (re)join a religion---one older and more interesting than yours, too. If I want to sacrifice, I'll go slaughter a goat or a ram rather than give up my gasoline-powered car for a bicycle or durable plastics for "biodegradable" junk. And if I want to believe the end of the world is near, the Book of Revelation is a lot more intriguing than the Book of Global Warming. :)
I do support sustainable development and using renewable resources---but only when it improves the standard of living for humanity, makes our lives better, or lowers our costs---not when it does the opposite. Solar energy is good for us because it relies on an (effectively) infinite resource, and removes our dependence on government- and corporate-controlled, centralized energy grids run on nonrenewable coal or oil. Same goes for wood-based heating vs. propane or natural gas. But these green initiatives stand in stark contrast to replacing useful, durable products with more expensive, failure-prone ones, which serves no purpose but to give the companies peddling this junk more control over us as we're forced to waste money buying their products over and over again.
And just wait until the government bans non-"paper alloy" plastics. For our own good, of course.
Liberty in your lifetime
First they came for the styrofoam...
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Why do we always subsidize stupid shit and rarely any of the things that are good for us or the planet?
You know what would make it cheaper? A goddamned government subsidy.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
So when I was repairing my surf ski with rolled up newspaper and polyester resin some years ago I was really making a "paper alloy"?
Deliberate fracture of language to make something sound like something else is to sign of a scam artist (or the marketing people for the composite in the article).
Then they came for the lightbulbs...
A "product" used to hold a kind of connotation that it's the last and final solution you will ever buy. So from that angle, there were hardy materials used and life-time warranties issued in some cases. And they really were robust. Take my 1960's Sunbeam toaster my mother handed down to me. These days it's a whole other ball game. Technology is such a fast moving target that the "product" in question is already obsolete the second the design is finalized and well before production starts. This pace of progress is being pushed by the producers as equally as it's being pulled by the consumer. No one corporation is to blame for this. It's a force of nature unto its own created and nurtured by modern society.
All that said. Who cares if my computer is 100% recyclable. It know my current MacBook will be replaced in a year or so, and the next one replaced some four years later after. My modern material possessions are no longer for keeps.
Life is not for the lazy.
You hit the nail on the head. That Sunbeam toaster is still useful, but don't use mom's refrigerator, even if it is still in new condition... a brand new refrigerator would pay for itself in very short order due to the energy savings. Computers, phones, and other modern electronics progress so quickly that "durability" need only be measured in years. Who the hell would still be walking around with a brick phone, even if it still worked and the analog network were still running? For that matter, who would use a Star Tac, which was the iPhone of 1998? Who wants my 1980 23" cabinet Zenith TV?
A kitchen should last 30 years, not a piece of electronics.
And some things are built far better than they were in ye olden days - cars being the best example. Show me a car from the 50s, 60s, or 70s that could go 100,000 miles with just oil changes and brake pads. Show me a 5 year, 50,000 mile warranty from back then.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Some things just need to be uncomfortably close to the sun before it will degrade...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
But when I went to that article, I found, "Polypropylene is liable to chain degradation from exposure to heat and UV radiation such as that present in sunlight."
Wait a minute...did you recently write an article for 16 concerned scientists?
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
I just ( this year ) bought several VISIO 22" TV's to replace the old NEC Multisync VGA monitors I have had in use for 20 years.
The Multisyncs still work. But they are not nearly as sharp, nor would they work as a TV, and a heckuva lot heaver. I am still wondering what to do with the multisyncs.. I will probably take them apart for their high-voltage video and deflection transistors, as well as a handful of high voltage diodes, capacitors, and various magnetics. Their 20 year old CRT's are all suffering from cathode emission degradation, subsequently can no longer give as sharp of image as they once did. My hat is off to the engineering team who designed these things. They have done their job very well.
It looks like my old LaserJet 2 will go when its toner runs out. Its plastics are getting quite brittle after 20 years exposure to ozone. It prints graphics at a glacial pace compared to my later machines. It has been a good machine. I doubt its replacement will last as long, but then, neither will I.
Top of the list goes to Toyota, who made me a car some 35 years ago, that has hauled me half a million miles with little more than oil changes and brake pads. The car shows the wear of old age which I attempt to disguise with new paint. The key is so worn it barely stays in the lock, but the car runs like a top. Its a simple little car: carburetor, points, manual transmission. I figure that car will be like the grandfather clock in the song that runs till the old man dies - in this case... me.
At the bottom of my list is the clowns who designed the valving for my kitchen sink. They did a great job concealing the leakage from a failing seal so it would drip somewhere I would not see it. I smelled it one day, when I had growths of mold and mildew all over where the water had puddled for years under the kitchen sink. Neatly hidden under a shelf. Major pain in the arse to fix.
Clowns of like ilk designed the shower valving in the shower, so leakage would be directed back through a little decorative tube into the wall where I would not see it. I did a little pre-emptive hacking with some putty and dammed up the little tube so that any leakage would be forced to drip out at the handle harmlessly falling down to the shower drain.
Just a little foresight in the design phase can sure save a heckuva lot of frustration for everyone else.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
And some things are built far better than they were in ye olden days - cars being the best example. Show me a car from the 50s, 60s, or 70s that could go 100,000 miles with just oil changes and brake pads. Show me a 5 year, 50,000 mile warranty from back then.
Perhaps cars aren't the best example. At least in the US, for a time cars were used to be specifically designed for planned obsolescense. For example, the Ford model T was a highly reliable rugged car that used advanced technology and materials and manufacturing techniques of the era to achieve that reliability. Unfortunatly the US car makers eventually decided that a consumption business model would be more profitable than a manufacturing based business model. US car makers then designed cars to wear out and seeded extensive dealer and parts distribution networks to capitalize on this business model.
When the Japanese decided they wanted to enter the US market in the '60s they didn't have all the parts distributors and repair resources that the incumbant US manufacturers had, they also had tax and distribution expenses to deliver products to the US, so they had to design their cars to last longer and be more reliable to justify higher initial product prices and repair prices to penetrate the market. The consumers eventually caught on to the value proposition for this business model and this led to the Japanese car manufacturers caputuring a larger part of the market in the '70s and '80s (the oil prices spiking during that time favoring the smaller Japanese cars didn't hurt either). After suffering major market declines, the US manufacturers essentially had to up their quality game to remain competitive which is why you see all the high quality cars from all manufacturers today.
It wasn't because the car manufacturers couldn't do the high reliability before (they started out that way), it's because they thought the planned obsolescence business model allowed them to make more money (sell, it cheaper, make spare parts, and encourage them to replace the product sooner). It's only after the Japanese car companies forced the US manufacturers away from that model that we get to where we are today.
And of course, there is a censoring issue. All old things that we see are good quality, simply because everything that broke has been thrown away.
[FUCK BETA]
Well yes, welcome to capitalism...
A system that encourages business to think only about their own short term profits, and not about long term sustainability.
A system that encourages exactly what you describe, because there is more profit in selling more products and having working reliable products in the hands of consumers reduces demand for new ones.
A system that encourages improving the efficiency of your supply chain, so that ultimately all your goods will be mass produced by robots and the minimum of expensive staff to manage them... The end result being mass unemployment and noone able to afford to buy your products.
A system that discourages long term planning, because someone else will easily be able to undercut you in the short term and drive you out of business, rendering your long term planning useless.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The consumers eventually caught on to the value proposition for this business model and this led to the Japanese car manufacturers caputuring a larger part of the market in the '70s and '80s (the oil prices spiking during that time favoring the smaller Japanese cars didn't hurt either).
I totally buy into your thesis, but even Japanese cars of the 70s were a pile of steaming dung compared to even American cars of the 2010s. You get better reliability, much much much much better performance (just try getting a 70s Civic up to highway speed with a full load!), and much less maintenance (no points to set, no carburetor to mess with). And the most amazing thing is that you can still get something like a Versa for $11,000. The little tiny 1971 Honda 600 was about $1500 ($8000 in today's dollars) for much less car... and I mean that both literally and figuratively. No crumple zones, no airbags, no air conditioning, 0-60 in never with it's whopping 36HP. You could instead compare the 1975 Honda Civic, but that only had 50HP and was $2200 or so, but you could at least fit a Western adult in it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.