Re:New discovery toward sugar origami
by LegitShady on Friday July 07, 2023 @10:38PM
(#36640844)
3 hour biodegradable is too fast. The material has to go somewhere. If it breaks up before it can be collected it's going to make a mess and cause buildups of whatever can feed off the carbs you're spreading everywhere.
Only around 36% of plastic is used for packaging. My comment was a direct response to the grandparent comment. If “for packaging” were included, I would have agreed. Replacing only plastic used for packaging will leave us dependent on oil.
To keep conveniences like my iced caramel frappalattechino we need a fast biodegradable, but like 3 hours degradable not 3 min degradable.
No idea if this is that, but “artificial shapes made of sugars like cellulose but not quite cellulose” sounds like you might be able to design something good that isn’t a forever chemical.
Remember SunChips? They made a “this multi-layer plastic snack bag can actually biodegrade AND keep our snack grease from leaking out on the shelf” chip bag. But they killed it because every crinkle sounded like a gun so people hated it. We still haven’t figured out those kinds of materials that work well.