Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic'

Re:Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic' by esskay on Tuesday June 25, 2024 @09:21AM (#40788283)

PLA (biodegradable corn) is often sold as being a good biodegradable plastic. It ommits the part where its only biodegradable in a high pressure, high heat industrial composter. If you put PLA in your home composter it'll still be exactly as it was in 5 years time.

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Re:Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic' by NoMoreNicksLeft on Tuesday June 25, 2024 @10:43AM (#40789275)

If the PLA is plasticizer-free and derived from vegetation, it can be burned without pollution. It's not like there's a bunch of chlorine or fluorine atoms in the molecule.

> If you put PLA in your home composter it'll still be exactly as it was in 5 years time.

More interested in learning to make it myself. Daughter and I have been extracting starch from potatoes, and we can reliably ferment to lactic acid. Distillation's trickier, and everything else after that's just bugshit crazy. Have to ferment M. hexanoica, it needs to be fed very specific nutrients to produce capryilic acid, extraction of that will be even more insane, and there seems to be no good source for tin in modern life. I've found a dozen tin scrapping videos on Youtube where you watch them and think to yourself "did they just screw around with soluble lead salts without even mentioning it?".

Also, I've had spontaneous combustion in our compost before. Maybe your compost game's just weak. Be sure to spread grass clippings until they're no longer deeper than about 3".

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Re:Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic' by Workaccount2 on Tuesday June 25, 2024 @10:58AM (#40789450)

I'd argue burning it is worse then sequestering it.

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Re:Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic' by NoMoreNicksLeft on Tuesday June 25, 2024 @11:20AM (#40789766)

Ok. Argue that. What about it is worse than sequestering it? If microplastics are so bad, you'd rather it just sit there slowly breaking down into small chains of lactic acid, and those leaching into ground and surface water and blowing around int he wind?

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Re:Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic' by Workaccount2 on Tuesday June 25, 2024 @02:31PM (#40791879)

Microplastics, while terrible for the environment and humans, aren't going to cause societal collapse over the next hundred years. CO2 is.

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Re:Researchers invent 100% biodegradable 'barley plastic' by NoMoreNicksLeft on Wednesday June 26, 2024 @09:44AM (#40799977)

That's net zero on carbon dioxide. The carbon comes out of the air, goes back in. I don't see what the big deal is. One of us has some confusion somewhere.

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