‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics

Re:‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to s... by derriz on Thursday June 24, 2021 @09:10AM (#27616913)

Could you explain what you mean?

I find it hard to believe that the environmental impact of one sturdier plastic bag is equivalent to hundreds of slightly flimsier bags.

I’ve shopped in a few European countries, and found the reusable plastic bags have maybe twice or three times the mass of the “non-reusable” one. I can’t see how they would have multiple orders of magnitude environment impact.

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Re:‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to s... by ShroudedNight on Thursday June 24, 2021 @10:40AM (#27618250)

I have not yet verified the references, but this SciShow episode seems to propose exactly that: https://youtu.be/JvzvM9tf5s0

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Re:‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to s... by derriz on Thursday June 24, 2021 @11:39AM (#27619174)

Maybe I'm quoting the wrong part of the video but he suggests you need to use the re-usable heavy bag six times not hundreds of times to equalise the environmental impact?

This looks about right to me - he's comparing with the very heaviest re-usable plastic bags which I could imagine have at least 6 times the mass of the single use bags.

I typically use the lighter re-usables plastic bags - unless I need to carry a lot of heavy stuff - which are maybe half the weight/thickness of the ones he uses for the comparison.

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Re:‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to s... by ShroudedNight on Thursday June 24, 2021 @03:19PM (#27622592)

You're correct, it appears I was conflating reusable plastic with cotton canvas. The multiplier goes up for "Total environmental impact" - but 'only' to 54x on average.

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