I’m sorry for the naivety, maybe there is something cool I’m not catching.
Haven’t we had biodegradable, compostable “plastic” shopping bags for like 20 years now? What’s the news here?
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
277 points (98.3% liked)
News
22839 readers
3623 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Probably that it's based on corn-waste. Most I've seen are sugar-cane based. US grows a lot more corn than sugar cane.
Decomposes in 180 days under what circumstances? 'cause if it requires high-temperature municipal compost, the vast majority of bags produced aren't gonna decompose.
Paper and canvas bags already do this. What an engineering marvel.
To be fair, corn is much faster to regrow than trees if we're talking about this vs. paper.
Hemp as well. I'm certain we could make some sort of plastics with hemp, we can make practically everything from hemp. The added benefit of hemp is that it stores 85% of the excessive amount of carbon it consumes in its roots, so we can do whatever we want with the rest of the plant, harvest the roots, compress them into a cube much denser than water, drop them into the Mariana Trench, and not worry about that carbon for a few hundred million years.
I like cannabis sativa for it’s medicinal and psychoactive properties, but I love cannabis sativa for its material, ecological, and agricultural properties. It’s a damn fine plant
I've done the math, and we could totally reverse anthropogenic climate change with a reasonable amount of hemp production. It could be done in as little as a decade with an unreasonable amount of production. Something like 5 billion acres of production per year, but if we got just 500 million acres into production, and threw away the excess carbon, we would wipe out the excess carbon we've put into the air over the last 12,000 years in just over a century.
At that point we could scale back production to use the hemp as a global thermostat, slowly adjusting the average temperature by a hundredth of a degree every decade or so.
The maths for Kushtopia add up.
It also takes a whole lot more energy and water to manufacture paper bags rather than plastic. I personally use synthetic reusable bags that will probably outlive me whenever possible.
Yeah, maybe. The paper industry is a farming industry like any other, so growth is a consideration but not necessarily the only one.
Whilst paper and canvas is biodegradable, plastic as a material has certain useful traits compared to paper and canvas, hence why making/developing similar biologically based and degradable materials helps reduce our reliance on it.
Examples of such traits: Liquid resistance, non-permeable to water, see-through.
And the #1 most important factor, and why plastic bags are the most common:
The cost
If we can't find a cheaper solution, it won't be adopted without regulations.
100%, most contexts a use for plastic and should be replaced with paper or cloth through regulation.
We have some in Cambodia made from cassava.
An Indian entrepreneur is using sugar, cellulose, and corn fibers to make a plastic-like carrier bag for small Indian businesses.
His company Bio Reform has already replaced 6 million plastic bags in the checkout counters of stores all over India.
Based in Hyderabad, Mohammed Azhar Mohiuddin first got the idea during the general mayhem that arose during the pandemic. Mohiuddin was looking at global environmental issues with the hope of finding one his entrepreneurial spirit had the capacity to tackle.
Corn has plenty of drawbacks even if it offers a few of the benefits of plastic.
Nice! With the best will in the world I always forget my standard shopping bags and I feel that the “bags for life” just replace one thin and crap lump of plastic for an overly engineered one.
How are they over-engineered? They last much longer. Canvas ones forever, pretty much.
The plastic ones (here in the UK at least) also split and fall apart, they’re better than the “standard” ones but they don’t usually last that much longer.
Also I have a million of them because I always forget to bring them.
Buy some actual good bags and store them in your car.
I don’t drive every time I go to the shops, plus I also have to remember to put them back once I get my shopping inside.
Just buy a new one every time and tell yourself next time you’ll put some in the car.
Ngl, this is basically what we do :(
I have both opinions: certain canvas bags will last you a lifetime and even you can fix them if necessary. Most stores sell you "bags for life" that aren't either recyclable (truly) nor meant to last a year of daily usage, probably because they are cheaping out on the materials and production.
So we still end with a pile of garbage.
However, I am against single-use anything and would say that promoting truly lasting bags should be a priority over trying to figure out a solution for a single facet of a large issue.
I feel like the thicker 'bags for life' are a bit of a false economy. I could be remembering wrong but with those, you need to use them something like either 12 or 20 times for them to work out as being less harmful than the old disposable plastic bags.
I try to avoid using them where possible but where I can, but when I have, I can't say I've been able to use them more than 5 or 6 times on average.
We had some from Lidl that broke on the way out of the shop! I wouldn’t trust most of them for 3 trips, let alone a lifetime of them.
Agreed. Of the supermarkets I go to, lidl make the weakest ones.
Bag for week would probably be more accurate but doesn't quite have the same ring to it 😂
I remember using them a lot (I'm from the UK) and they were much stronger, could hold more, and would last ages if you didn't strain them.
Hey Pete,
What helped me with the same problem and others is to act like it really mattered,cause it does. For me I ask myself "if I were to get 20 million $£€ if i did this perfect for a year, would I." then try and act like it. If I were to give you this money, you would not forget your bags at home. You would always have them when needed and in a quality that wouldn't rip easily. Act like that. Then it will quickly be a habbit that you won't have to think about.
GoodNewsNetwork - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for GoodNewsNetwork:
MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this source
Media Bias Fact Check | bot supportSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/startup-replaces-6-million-plastic-bags-with-prototype-made-from-corn-waste-that-decomposes-in-180-days/