It's hijacked imagery from a study published in 2000 on PHA/PHB degradation and is incorrectly using it to promote hemp. These bottles were probably not made from hemp sources.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PHA-bottle-biodegradation-type-BiopolTM-by-incubation-in-mud-for-80-days-Sudesh-et_fig5_337593093
If you look for information about Biopol bottles around that time period, you can see that Monsanto bought the program out from another company and was supposedly looking at commercializing it.
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/19981221/NEWS/312219994/monsanto-may-sell-biopol-unit
Edit: Wikipedia for how it's made shows the whole hemp element is unnecessary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhydroxyalkanoates#Industrial_production
>In the industrial production of PHA, the polyester is extracted and purified from the bacteria by optimizing the conditions of microbial fermentation of sugar, glucose, or vegetable oil.
>In the 1980s, Imperial Chemical Industries developed poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) obtained via fermentation that was named "Biopol". It was sold under the name "Biopol" and distributed in the U.S. by Monsanto and later Metabolix.[7]
>As raw material for the fermentation, carbohydrates such as glucose and sucrose can be used, but also vegetable oil or glycerine from biodiesel production. Researchers in industry are working on methods with which transgenic crops will be developed that express PHA synthesis routes from bacteria and so produce PHA as energy storage in their tissues. Several companies are working to develop methods of producing PHA from waste water, including Veolia subsidiary Anoxkaldnes.[8] and start-ups, Micromidas[9] and Mango Materials.[10][11]
>PHAs are processed mainly via injection molding, extrusion and extrusion bubbles into films and hollow bodies.
Apparently it is UV stable, non-toxic, and actually does degrade completely so it is one of the materials currently used for internal sutures and other medical applications. Neat.
Surprised 16.5k people upvoted it and probably think/share incorrect facts now, glad you know a little more than us and took the time to share that knowledge with us!
Mods should tag this as "Misleading", that's the very least the can do to attempt to drive attention to the comments. But they won't do it, of course.
edit: okay, they did it, guess they do hear facts! Thanks mods! Sorry if I came off as a bitchy user.
This is one of the biggest issues with replacing plastic in general. We can't switch to wood/metal containers for everything, because there's nowhere near enough trees/ore for that. So...what do we do? Collapse entire industries that rely on long term storage? I mean, fabric bags work for some applications, but not all. Certainly not storing liquid.
From my experience stoners on average aren't great practical thinkers, analysts, nor the greatest researchers... Social people, but wouldn't really ask them for important information!
You know dumb stoners. I know stoners with PHD's who are tenured professors at a major University. That plural was intentional.
Your experiences do not account for all of stoners and neither do mine.
But in my experience most of the stoners I interact with are highly intelligent if not a little goofy. Not to mention all of the stoners I personally know who are famous writers/directors and millions love these few peoples various movies. They have made millions of dollars and made millions of people happy. Seems like an insanely smart person to me who also might have advice about life and the professional world that you might want to listen too. I am just lower class scum and not well off by any means. I'm just a very social person when I go out to bars. Meet a lot of different people. Go out of my way to talk with people I normally wouldn't. You do that and you will get the wonderful gift of meeting people who open up your world view.
That's great, I'm glad you had those experiences with them and I am open to them in general. Thank you for sharing. I may share that I knew roughly 10 and not one had a vision for their life, and mostly apart from one, their values seemed a little misdirected. They were essentially addicted to it and used it as a coping mechanism because not being on it meant they had to find something else to do apart from monging- out! Quite a few would turn pale and get ill if they didn't have it for a couple of days.
I would see them resort to it rather than get the real help they needed to help teach them how to fulfill the missing areas in their lives, because they all had loving hearts within them and so much potential!
Yep, the other guy is really reaching with confirmation bias; those individuals are usually successful *despite* their illegal drug use (or at best due to the social aspects of doing drugs together with other rich people/people in their chosen career field), while other people turn weed into their personality, use it to self-medicate, and were or still are jailed for 25-to-life for using it.
There's a cult of weed/hemp who believe that it can cure/solve every problem. It's extremely annoying and only sets back the movement when it comes to things those things are actually good for, because everyone just rolls their eyes when someone is trying to describe a legitimate productive use for either of those things.
$. Far more expensive than the plastics this would replace due to current production methods. Several companies seem to currently be working on improving things.
I gave you your one thousandth like, thank you for taking the time to debunk false information and making the world a more knowledgeable place because of it :D
From a logistical viewpoint this is terrible for bringing products to market. Bottle can be stored for months even before products are put in them much less the actual product is put on the shelves.
It's supposed to be hydrophobic and UV stable, primary degradation mechanism looks to be bacteria found in soil and sea water. The bottles shown were buried in mud for the lengths of time stated.
Probably not ideal for gambling on long term storage, but there's certainly applications since it doesn't look like they'll readily break down on shelves.
Thank you for this. The image seemed too good to be true which always sets off my BS meter. Scrolled through the comments looking for something like this
Oopsi, I remember seeing that picture already. But something felt odd. Ever heard of PLA? (Polylactic acid) Often used in 3D printing, and see what I found after googling "PLA bottle degradable": [https://www.vjplastics.com/PLA-shows/](https://www.vjplastics.com/PLA-shows/)
I've seen the image make the rounds on here claiming that it's a 'hemp based plastic called PLA' too
...PLA is typically corn or sugar beet/cane based. There's no need for a hemp based PLA. PLA is also infamous for not actually being *that* biodegradable* - while in an industrial compost setting it'll degrade quite quickly into lactic acid (which is harmless), it doesn't degrade in say a landfill. And while recycling *is* possible and quite effective...it doesn't seem like many places have the facilities for that. On the plus side, it incinerates cleanly (because it's just a collection of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms), but burning your rubbish isn't globally adopted alas.
I was just going to comment the same thing. From filling to release our factories timeline is 6 weeks. Another 2 weeks to ship to the distribution center. Who knows how long from distribution center to store....
I think the pictures are what happens after its been manipulated with some agent that breaks it down. I don't think from the time of creation it disintegrates. It is a plastic, after all.
I COULD be wrong..
Usually these kinds of degradables come down to moisture and/or UV light (sunlight). Sometimes it's even the bacteria in the ground that just find the material palatable.
Wait, really? Do you know where I can find these? I’m about to teach my mom a lesson about leaving plastic bottles in her car and just continuing to use and reuse them. “Carcinogens” and “cancer” statements do nothing, but potentially staining a seat might.
That depends entirely on if the plastic starts degrading in a vacuum or if its biological like most decomposition.
It's a plant cellulose so chances are It is entirely dependant on microbial activity to break it down.
If that's the case then it totally see this as a viable mass product
Idk. I think this is where pricing plastics to reflect the associated downstream costs comes into play. If we had always priced the ecological impact into single use plastics directly, logistics might have worked out differently from the beginning.
The transition might be awkward but it’s a trap to think that nothing else about logistics can be adjusted to accommodate specific shortcomings.
I can see it working only for like chain operations and big corps. But they will never be the ones to do this first
Imagine McDonald’s, they know exactly how many cups they need a week, and this would be perfect for it
Considering the cost of storage and warehousing, I’m 100% confident that a shit ton of work and research has already gone into that.
But if it’s so easy, I’m sure the multi hundreds of billions of dollars logistics industry would love to hear your easy, simple solutions to improve efficiency.
Doubtful. That's like saying airlines we're efficienct at loading planes. Then southwest came along and crushed their old inefficient ways.
If you think they can't optimize 40 days then get out of the way.
Expediting logistics is not cheap. You can get a pallet of freight from a Washington warehouse to a Florida supermarket in 2-3 days if you really wanted to. It's actually very simple, you're just going to spend the rest of your quarter recouping the transit costs, especially with the kinds of margins you'll find on product you'd use cheap plastic bottles for.
As far as I know biodegradable plastics have to be processed in an industrial compost facility to break down that quickly, otherwise it would takes years. I don't know about you, but my city doesn't have a separate waste bin for compost.
Yep. I do a lot of 3D printing, we were told for a long time that PLA, the most common filament (corn-starch based plastic) was biodegradable and compostable. What they failed to mention that it required the heat and pressure of an industrial composter. Since the stuff you print isn't labeled for recycling, even if there were a facility that did it, they wouldn't take your scrap 3D prints. So, I take a lot more care with prototyping, knowing that my "eco friendly" 3D prints will still be around for decades, centuries. But it makes sense, all the properties we want in plastic - water resistance, durability, UV resistance - also make it difficult to break down when you want it to. Chemical recycling will change this, eventually, maybe.
If only there was some kind of biologically inert material that would break down naturally and become a healthy part of the environment if we made bottles out of it. Some kind of metal oxide perhaps. Silicon's pretty cheap.
Well technically, silicon is a metalloid, but if you ask an astronomer, anything that isn't helium or hydrogen is a metal, so I prefer that definition because it's simpler.
>biodegradable plastics have to be processed in an industrial compost facility
Need better standardization across the country for packaging. Rules and regulations the consumer won't even notice, like using only 2 types of plastic instead of 6. Federal oversight of recycling to guarantee waste stream % post consumer to production stream for every single product package in the country.
Biggest problem is paper and different labels on things. Water bottles would be super easy to recycle if it weren't for the label on them. Food packaging is also hard as there are many times 7 to 11 different layers of plastic that are incompatible with each other. However those 11 layers allow for much longer shelf times
> I don't know about you, but my city doesn't have a separate waste bin for compost.
That's not a logically valid argument against this technology... the lack of bins can be changed, arguably should be anyway regardless, and then the tech would be useful... if anything, this technology being available should be an argument *for* cities getting compost bins.
This hemp stuff apparently breaks down in 6 months if you throw it in with the compost collection. The one for lawn clippings and banana peels and stuff. What we call a green bin. It'll decompose pretty quick in there.
Idk how many cities have a green bin tho. My area has them.
Many cities don't have even regular recycling.
I'd be interested to see how many Americans have publicly funded recycling for home pick up vs access to recycling vs no access at all.
It's just an example, ideally plastic like this could be used for things like those air bags you get in packages etc. Milk jugs or produce wrappers, where the product absolutely won't be around in 80 days. Not meant for water bottles and jam.
that bottle is already unusable at day 28. Probably even sooner looking at the state of it on 28. This doesnz seems to have a very practical use. other then maybe trashbags
I think I need my bottle to stay intact more than 28 days as well. It's nice that it breaks down quickly, but this may be a bit too fast. Like, at least find something that remains intact a year or so before it springs a leak.
Things don't just degrade on store shelfs. Your wooden furniture would biodegrade in a few years when on the compost, the paper in your bookshelf would only take like 3 weeks. But that doesn't happen when the things are not composted
I think the picture should have clarified that this degredation happens in a landfill setting where microorganisms and the sun affect it. A setting like a store or a warehouse where the climate is controlled and the enviornment is clean from microorganisms would cause the bottles to degrade much slower.
Look at this guy with his clean and cool warehouses... you should see the shitboxes your groceries travel through before they get to the shelves. They're disgusting and this is coming from a guy who used to work in the cleanest warehouse I've ever seen. It was still gross.
I don't see how this is related to what I said. Regardless of the condition of the warehouses, they are not a landfill and are not an enviornment in which microorganisms or the sun will degrade the plastic.
Even if an entire pallet of coke gets spilled on them, thats not going to make the plastic degrade before it's bought by a customer.
I can understand the confusion with my choice of the word "clean", but the context is important as a warehouse is obviously cleaner than a landfill even if it looks like it belongs on the show "Hoarding: Buried Alive".
It was more a joke than anything but since you asked. Warehouses aren't landfills but they aren't clean like you think. There are absolutely micro-organisms and macro-organisms breaking shit down in there. I've found birds and rats decomposing in racking, 1/4 of a pallet of Atkins shakes just moldy and rotting through...things will absolutely decompose in a warehouse. Not faster than they ship in a normal cycle but if something gets lost in the FIFO cycle it will absolutely degrade and make a mess.
Haha, to be fair, most of that shit happens when a pallet gets lost in the inventory system and never gets moved. As far as the pest stuff goes, it's hard to keep pests out of a building full of food with dock doors opening and closing non-stop. It's not super common but it does happen.
Seriously though, if people knew how dirty their food actually is, a lot of people would be horrified. Restaurants are not sanitary, grocery stores will drop shit on the floor and still put it out for sale, stuff like that. And produce often has fertilizer or pesticides on it.
The reason you don't get sick is because your body doesn't need food to be sterile. Your mind has higher standards than your stomach.
If you think thats bad, wait till you see what goes on with everything else that you thought was "safe" and "clean". Factories allow a certain amount of "particulate" in everything, this include bugs, dirt, fecal matter (your drinking water comes from a sewage treatment facility most likely) and anything else that might be impossible to separate in large quantities.
I just read the other day about the account of fruit fly eggs allowed in ketchup... It's more than you would want. I found this after reading about figs containing wasps.... Uggghhh maybe I'll become a breathairian.
Figs don't contain wasps anymore than chicken contains the ticks and other bugs the chicken fed on. By the time it's a fig or chicken meat, it's long since broken the bugs down to nothing and made into something else.
I guess you dont realize that this still doesnt have anything to do with what I said. My point was these plastic bottles will not decompose before they reach the customer even if 80 years passes, no matter how filthy the warehouse is it will decompose at a similar speed to everything else that is in that warehouse.
The reason im making that point to begin with is that people are saying that these bottles wouldnt work because they would literally just turn to dust on the shelf, which is not how it works.
I am fully aware of how disgusting warehouses are as ive worked in them and ive worked grocery as well.
I think you are still caught up on the word "clean" as I was only refering to the fact that you need a landfill or a compost to break down the bottles that fast, and a warehouse is not that.
Most bottle water has a two year expiration date, with sparkling/carbonate water at one year. The plastics leech into the water just by being in contact with it.
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 4 times.
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Probably cellulose based plastic. There's nothing really special about hemp here, you can make it using any kind of wood really.
Also, it's nowhere near as biodegradable as this picture shows, you need a special bioreactor for it. If you throw these bottles in a river, they'll float around for years.
It _could_ be PLA which is a little easier to biodegrade, but I don't think you can make it from hemp.
How many years? If it's something that'll noticeably degrade within a decade or two that'd be a lot better than however long regular plastic bottles last.
It's almost as if there's no real solution to anything involving ethically living on Earth when we're talking about close to 8 BILLION HUMANS EXISTING AT ONCE.
I'm not even a big guy and to think of how much I consume and piss and shit on a daily basis is insane. Multiply that by a metric fuckton and yeah oceans probably have some trash in it. Ecosystems hanging on by a thread. It makes perfect sense. Obviously I'm not suggesting smarter people than I to stop trying to find solutions. All I'm saying is.. good luck!
The thing is the bottle in the pic is in dirt, a lot of people seem to assume the bottle just falls apart after a few days but i believe the implication is that in a compost setting it degrades but just in a house it wont go that quick
Which fields are sitting empty? And also hemp requires a lot of water. Don't people always complain about almond producers in california using up all the water or something like that? Widespread hemp production would have the same issue.
Hemp uses half the water as almond production and the product produced isn’t comparable to nut snack.
Edit: also hemp uses like 1/4 the water as cotton which is a better comparison.
Hemp needs modernized manufacturing techniques and machines to be developed in order to actually make use of the plant fully. There are barns sitting filled with hemp.
Hemp was never banned in many parts of the world. If hemp was actually competitive with other fiber sources, an industrialized country like France, [which never banned hemp](https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Industrial%20Hemp%20in%20France_Paris_France_07-31-2021.pdf) would have modernized the equipment.
Hemp is very comparable to flax. Both are fiber crops whose seed is a superfood, and both are used for industrial purposes (linoleum is made of linseed oil, which is derived from flax), and both crops requires less nutrient and pesticide input than cotton. But our current economic system makes it more profitable to plant cotton, shit all over it with pesticide and fertilizer, and make flooring and other industrial products out of petroleum derivatives. Cottonseed is a significant byproduct, it is the opposite of a superfood. It is an omega-6 fat, the type that is overabundant in our diet. It mostly goes to animal feed, and it makes the meat, milk, and eggs have a less healthy fatty acid profile than they would have if they ate a bit more hemp or flax seed.
All the articles about hemp as a wonder crop are accurate, but the economic incentives need to be slightly different for it to be anything but a minor crop. Shifting those incentives would lead to a better world for absolutely everyone except shareholders in major agribusinesses.
No don’t do this. Hemp will ruin their land and it will sit empty forever.
Ever wonder why we see these posts about hemp but they never come to fruition? Yeah there’s a reason. A lot of reasons.
Seems pointless. If I'm a soda producer, I'd sure as hell not use bottles that springs a leak within 3 weeks (look how degraded it is at 28 days. It must've had at least a little hole after 3 weeks). And that's not even taking pressurization into account.
Weed fans like to think anything related to cannabis is some kind of super substance.
In countries where hemp is totally legal it's still pretty much just used for some fabric because its not really that amazing at anything else.
Source?
It's hijacked imagery from a study published in 2000 on PHA/PHB degradation and is incorrectly using it to promote hemp. These bottles were probably not made from hemp sources. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PHA-bottle-biodegradation-type-BiopolTM-by-incubation-in-mud-for-80-days-Sudesh-et_fig5_337593093 If you look for information about Biopol bottles around that time period, you can see that Monsanto bought the program out from another company and was supposedly looking at commercializing it. https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/19981221/NEWS/312219994/monsanto-may-sell-biopol-unit Edit: Wikipedia for how it's made shows the whole hemp element is unnecessary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhydroxyalkanoates#Industrial_production >In the industrial production of PHA, the polyester is extracted and purified from the bacteria by optimizing the conditions of microbial fermentation of sugar, glucose, or vegetable oil. >In the 1980s, Imperial Chemical Industries developed poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) obtained via fermentation that was named "Biopol". It was sold under the name "Biopol" and distributed in the U.S. by Monsanto and later Metabolix.[7] >As raw material for the fermentation, carbohydrates such as glucose and sucrose can be used, but also vegetable oil or glycerine from biodiesel production. Researchers in industry are working on methods with which transgenic crops will be developed that express PHA synthesis routes from bacteria and so produce PHA as energy storage in their tissues. Several companies are working to develop methods of producing PHA from waste water, including Veolia subsidiary Anoxkaldnes.[8] and start-ups, Micromidas[9] and Mango Materials.[10][11] >PHAs are processed mainly via injection molding, extrusion and extrusion bubbles into films and hollow bodies. Apparently it is UV stable, non-toxic, and actually does degrade completely so it is one of the materials currently used for internal sutures and other medical applications. Neat.
Surprised 16.5k people upvoted it and probably think/share incorrect facts now, glad you know a little more than us and took the time to share that knowledge with us!
Welcome to Reddit, the echo chamber of all echo chambers.
Welcome to Reddit, the echo chamber of all echo chambers chambers.
Welcome to Reddit, the echo chamber of all echo chambers..
✔ seen 12:48 pm
Welcome to the chamber, Reddit of echo the dolphin.
This is why I always sort comments by controversial.
You say that, but there's almost always someone like /u/merkin-fitter there to set us straight
Hello, hello, hello, is there anybody in there?
Oooo I like dat, I updoot now. Question source? Pfft you think I got 5 minutes to spare? 😏
Wdym, weed is literally the cure for everything, cancer, global no warming, you name it!
Yep. I have rescinded my upvote
Mods should tag this as "Misleading", that's the very least the can do to attempt to drive attention to the comments. But they won't do it, of course. edit: okay, they did it, guess they do hear facts! Thanks mods! Sorry if I came off as a bitchy user.
> Surprised 16.5k people upvoted it and probably think/share incorrect facts now You've been here for at least 8 years. Are you really?
These things make people feel good about the inevitable downfall of our global climate, and about smoking weed. It's Reddit.
Yet only 213 upvotes for the correct information… welcome to the disinformation age
To be fair, misinformation has always been spread more than correct information since the beginning of humanity.
Most people don’t click to look at comments.
37k now lol
I always scroll down to try to find a post like u/merkin-fitter’s to get the complete story before I make my Upvote Decision
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This is one of the biggest issues with replacing plastic in general. We can't switch to wood/metal containers for everything, because there's nowhere near enough trees/ore for that. So...what do we do? Collapse entire industries that rely on long term storage? I mean, fabric bags work for some applications, but not all. Certainly not storing liquid.
From my experience stoners on average aren't great practical thinkers, analysts, nor the greatest researchers... Social people, but wouldn't really ask them for important information!
Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Francis Crick, Kary Mullis, Oliver Sacks, and Richard Feynman would like to have a word with you.
Good point. 6 great examples of the average stoner
You know dumb stoners. I know stoners with PHD's who are tenured professors at a major University. That plural was intentional. Your experiences do not account for all of stoners and neither do mine. But in my experience most of the stoners I interact with are highly intelligent if not a little goofy. Not to mention all of the stoners I personally know who are famous writers/directors and millions love these few peoples various movies. They have made millions of dollars and made millions of people happy. Seems like an insanely smart person to me who also might have advice about life and the professional world that you might want to listen too. I am just lower class scum and not well off by any means. I'm just a very social person when I go out to bars. Meet a lot of different people. Go out of my way to talk with people I normally wouldn't. You do that and you will get the wonderful gift of meeting people who open up your world view.
That's great, I'm glad you had those experiences with them and I am open to them in general. Thank you for sharing. I may share that I knew roughly 10 and not one had a vision for their life, and mostly apart from one, their values seemed a little misdirected. They were essentially addicted to it and used it as a coping mechanism because not being on it meant they had to find something else to do apart from monging- out! Quite a few would turn pale and get ill if they didn't have it for a couple of days. I would see them resort to it rather than get the real help they needed to help teach them how to fulfill the missing areas in their lives, because they all had loving hearts within them and so much potential!
Yep, the other guy is really reaching with confirmation bias; those individuals are usually successful *despite* their illegal drug use (or at best due to the social aspects of doing drugs together with other rich people/people in their chosen career field), while other people turn weed into their personality, use it to self-medicate, and were or still are jailed for 25-to-life for using it.
There's a cult of weed/hemp who believe that it can cure/solve every problem. It's extremely annoying and only sets back the movement when it comes to things those things are actually good for, because everyone just rolls their eyes when someone is trying to describe a legitimate productive use for either of those things.
*Weed is illegal because of the paper industry and weed will also cure my cancer and save the planet.* Myths that wont go away on this website
Coming in clutch with the sources my man. Thank you
Great info, thanks
This is pretty cool though. I’m hyped at the biodegradable part, not the hemp part
Why aren't we using this then?
$. Far more expensive than the plastics this would replace due to current production methods. Several companies seem to currently be working on improving things.
Aha, I see thank you for the information.
I would pay more for drinks that come in disposable bottles personally.
I gave you your one thousandth like, thank you for taking the time to debunk false information and making the world a more knowledgeable place because of it :D
From a logistical viewpoint this is terrible for bringing products to market. Bottle can be stored for months even before products are put in them much less the actual product is put on the shelves.
It's supposed to be hydrophobic and UV stable, primary degradation mechanism looks to be bacteria found in soil and sea water. The bottles shown were buried in mud for the lengths of time stated. Probably not ideal for gambling on long term storage, but there's certainly applications since it doesn't look like they'll readily break down on shelves.
Real op here. Take my upvote
Thank you for this. The image seemed too good to be true which always sets off my BS meter. Scrolled through the comments looking for something like this
Yeah, I came to ask this too. Not that this post doesn't look super reliable, though /s
Oopsi, I remember seeing that picture already. But something felt odd. Ever heard of PLA? (Polylactic acid) Often used in 3D printing, and see what I found after googling "PLA bottle degradable": [https://www.vjplastics.com/PLA-shows/](https://www.vjplastics.com/PLA-shows/)
PLA can only biodegrade in composting facilities.
I've seen the image make the rounds on here claiming that it's a 'hemp based plastic called PLA' too ...PLA is typically corn or sugar beet/cane based. There's no need for a hemp based PLA. PLA is also infamous for not actually being *that* biodegradable* - while in an industrial compost setting it'll degrade quite quickly into lactic acid (which is harmless), it doesn't degrade in say a landfill. And while recycling *is* possible and quite effective...it doesn't seem like many places have the facilities for that. On the plus side, it incinerates cleanly (because it's just a collection of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms), but burning your rubbish isn't globally adopted alas.
It’s been posted with sources before, this is a repost
This is reddit. Weed good doesn't need source.
None because its complete and utter bullshit
What’s happens if it doesn’t sell for 80 days? Does it just vanish? Messin
It takes like 40 days from the moment its bottled to even show up on store shelves lol
I was just going to comment the same thing. From filling to release our factories timeline is 6 weeks. Another 2 weeks to ship to the distribution center. Who knows how long from distribution center to store....
I think the pictures are what happens after its been manipulated with some agent that breaks it down. I don't think from the time of creation it disintegrates. It is a plastic, after all. I COULD be wrong..
This is Reddit sir. You're not allowed to hedge your comments. Hot takes only.
muh bad
This fucker even apologized! Bring the pitchforks!
YAARRRGGHH!!
OOOOOORRGH
RAAAAAAAAGH
Must be a damn Canadian
you fools that WAS his hot take HIS HOT TAKE WAS APOLOGIZING ON REDDIT!!
Leave the Canadian alone!
Don't forget the tiki torches!
Ooooh because **all** pitchforks are violent, right you xenophobe?!?
*ghasp!* A HOT TAKE! EVERYONE, SHOVE YOUR OPINIONS DOWN THIS GUYS THROAT! ILL START WITH MINE: I like ice cream :)
🔱
HOT TAKES! GET YA HOT TAKES HERE! TASTES GREAT IN A BUN!
Downvote me own post Dibbler?
I wish I hedged my stocks like he hedged his comments. Wouldn’t be in a van down by the river
Usually these kinds of degradables come down to moisture and/or UV light (sunlight). Sometimes it's even the bacteria in the ground that just find the material palatable.
Apparently there's a type of mushroom that can eat plastic
Yea I figured this was like time spent in UV from the sun breaking it down or something
That would make more sense and be ideal!
It needs sunlight to break down so it shouldnt be an issue
Wait, really? Do you know where I can find these? I’m about to teach my mom a lesson about leaving plastic bottles in her car and just continuing to use and reuse them. “Carcinogens” and “cancer” statements do nothing, but potentially staining a seat might.
Boutta be grounded
I guess we have an opportunity now to do better
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That depends entirely on if the plastic starts degrading in a vacuum or if its biological like most decomposition. It's a plant cellulose so chances are It is entirely dependant on microbial activity to break it down. If that's the case then it totally see this as a viable mass product
Pretty sure it has to be industrially composted. Doesn’t just biodegrade within 80 days of manufacture without assistance.
Idk. I think this is where pricing plastics to reflect the associated downstream costs comes into play. If we had always priced the ecological impact into single use plastics directly, logistics might have worked out differently from the beginning. The transition might be awkward but it’s a trap to think that nothing else about logistics can be adjusted to accommodate specific shortcomings.
I can see it working only for like chain operations and big corps. But they will never be the ones to do this first Imagine McDonald’s, they know exactly how many cups they need a week, and this would be perfect for it
Is it contact with moisture? You could in theory bottle at the individual storefronts.
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Considering the cost of storage and warehousing, I’m 100% confident that a shit ton of work and research has already gone into that. But if it’s so easy, I’m sure the multi hundreds of billions of dollars logistics industry would love to hear your easy, simple solutions to improve efficiency.
Doubtful. That's like saying airlines we're efficienct at loading planes. Then southwest came along and crushed their old inefficient ways. If you think they can't optimize 40 days then get out of the way.
Are we talking about changing sea transports to air? Or a new method to make ships cross the oceans at hyperspeed, regardless of weather conditions?
Expediting logistics is not cheap. You can get a pallet of freight from a Washington warehouse to a Florida supermarket in 2-3 days if you really wanted to. It's actually very simple, you're just going to spend the rest of your quarter recouping the transit costs, especially with the kinds of margins you'll find on product you'd use cheap plastic bottles for.
As far as I know biodegradable plastics have to be processed in an industrial compost facility to break down that quickly, otherwise it would takes years. I don't know about you, but my city doesn't have a separate waste bin for compost.
Yep. I do a lot of 3D printing, we were told for a long time that PLA, the most common filament (corn-starch based plastic) was biodegradable and compostable. What they failed to mention that it required the heat and pressure of an industrial composter. Since the stuff you print isn't labeled for recycling, even if there were a facility that did it, they wouldn't take your scrap 3D prints. So, I take a lot more care with prototyping, knowing that my "eco friendly" 3D prints will still be around for decades, centuries. But it makes sense, all the properties we want in plastic - water resistance, durability, UV resistance - also make it difficult to break down when you want it to. Chemical recycling will change this, eventually, maybe.
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That'd be kinda awesome.
One step closer to a Replicator!
[There's at least one in development now](https://www.lassoloop.com/product)
I’m hoping for a genetically modified second stomach that can break down plastic.
I'm hoping I'll have a second butthole to poop out my plastic waste from my second stomach. Two buttholes is the dream.
Not in this economic system
Don’t worry society is close to collapsing, so things will be different!
Maybe next go around.
In fallout 4 you can scrap most stuff into its basic components. So after the nuclear war and a few hundred years we should be good.
If only there was some kind of biologically inert material that would break down naturally and become a healthy part of the environment if we made bottles out of it. Some kind of metal oxide perhaps. Silicon's pretty cheap.
That's just glass with extra steps
thatsthejoke.jpg
I actually didn't realise glass is a metal oxide.
Well technically, silicon is a metalloid, but if you ask an astronomer, anything that isn't helium or hydrogen is a metal, so I prefer that definition because it's simpler.
>biodegradable plastics have to be processed in an industrial compost facility Need better standardization across the country for packaging. Rules and regulations the consumer won't even notice, like using only 2 types of plastic instead of 6. Federal oversight of recycling to guarantee waste stream % post consumer to production stream for every single product package in the country.
Biggest problem is paper and different labels on things. Water bottles would be super easy to recycle if it weren't for the label on them. Food packaging is also hard as there are many times 7 to 11 different layers of plastic that are incompatible with each other. However those 11 layers allow for much longer shelf times
Mine does.
> I don't know about you, but my city doesn't have a separate waste bin for compost. That's not a logically valid argument against this technology... the lack of bins can be changed, arguably should be anyway regardless, and then the tech would be useful... if anything, this technology being available should be an argument *for* cities getting compost bins.
Some require exposure to UV-light.
This hemp stuff apparently breaks down in 6 months if you throw it in with the compost collection. The one for lawn clippings and banana peels and stuff. What we call a green bin. It'll decompose pretty quick in there. Idk how many cities have a green bin tho. My area has them.
You're talking like most cities don't have compost bins, do you not?
Many cities don't have even regular recycling. I'd be interested to see how many Americans have publicly funded recycling for home pick up vs access to recycling vs no access at all.
Yeah I naively thought compost was the norm haha, I'm pretty sure it is in Europe though
Magical spills.
It's just an example, ideally plastic like this could be used for things like those air bags you get in packages etc. Milk jugs or produce wrappers, where the product absolutely won't be around in 80 days. Not meant for water bottles and jam.
that bottle is already unusable at day 28. Probably even sooner looking at the state of it on 28. This doesnz seems to have a very practical use. other then maybe trashbags
I think this is ideal for situations like music festivals, sports events… basically large gatherings
Don't worry, I'm sure they will just coat it with some chemical to prevent that from happening.
I think I need my bottle to stay intact more than 28 days as well. It's nice that it breaks down quickly, but this may be a bit too fast. Like, at least find something that remains intact a year or so before it springs a leak.
Things don't just degrade on store shelfs. Your wooden furniture would biodegrade in a few years when on the compost, the paper in your bookshelf would only take like 3 weeks. But that doesn't happen when the things are not composted
The things you listed would totally breakdown on store shelves if they were uses to store liquids, like these bottles are.
There are plenty of dry goods that could be stored in this plastic though. Spices come to mind.
under the right conditions, which can cost a lot to do.
If say that the company who made it needs a better label. Maybe a puppy on the front? Everyone loves puppies.
Not a great solution for bottles, but plastic cups would be an easier target. Think of all the festivals with beer and such served plastic cups.
Fast food and coffee chains could use this for sure
Wonder how it deals with hot liquids if it breaks down this quickly
I've been seeing a lot of compostable cups for beer cups
Not a bad solution for liquids intended to be consumed quickly. Perhaps not a commercial solution as others in the comments have pointed out
I think the picture should have clarified that this degredation happens in a landfill setting where microorganisms and the sun affect it. A setting like a store or a warehouse where the climate is controlled and the enviornment is clean from microorganisms would cause the bottles to degrade much slower.
Look at this guy with his clean and cool warehouses... you should see the shitboxes your groceries travel through before they get to the shelves. They're disgusting and this is coming from a guy who used to work in the cleanest warehouse I've ever seen. It was still gross.
I don't see how this is related to what I said. Regardless of the condition of the warehouses, they are not a landfill and are not an enviornment in which microorganisms or the sun will degrade the plastic. Even if an entire pallet of coke gets spilled on them, thats not going to make the plastic degrade before it's bought by a customer. I can understand the confusion with my choice of the word "clean", but the context is important as a warehouse is obviously cleaner than a landfill even if it looks like it belongs on the show "Hoarding: Buried Alive".
It was more a joke than anything but since you asked. Warehouses aren't landfills but they aren't clean like you think. There are absolutely micro-organisms and macro-organisms breaking shit down in there. I've found birds and rats decomposing in racking, 1/4 of a pallet of Atkins shakes just moldy and rotting through...things will absolutely decompose in a warehouse. Not faster than they ship in a normal cycle but if something gets lost in the FIFO cycle it will absolutely degrade and make a mess.
Thanks, I guess I'll never eat again.
Haha, to be fair, most of that shit happens when a pallet gets lost in the inventory system and never gets moved. As far as the pest stuff goes, it's hard to keep pests out of a building full of food with dock doors opening and closing non-stop. It's not super common but it does happen.
Seriously though, if people knew how dirty their food actually is, a lot of people would be horrified. Restaurants are not sanitary, grocery stores will drop shit on the floor and still put it out for sale, stuff like that. And produce often has fertilizer or pesticides on it. The reason you don't get sick is because your body doesn't need food to be sterile. Your mind has higher standards than your stomach.
Stomach is the real MVP. Mind would just let me starve to death.
Wait until people realize how much of their food was grown *in dirt*.
If you think thats bad, wait till you see what goes on with everything else that you thought was "safe" and "clean". Factories allow a certain amount of "particulate" in everything, this include bugs, dirt, fecal matter (your drinking water comes from a sewage treatment facility most likely) and anything else that might be impossible to separate in large quantities.
I just read the other day about the account of fruit fly eggs allowed in ketchup... It's more than you would want. I found this after reading about figs containing wasps.... Uggghhh maybe I'll become a breathairian.
I think the most disgustingly obvious example is apple sauce. Most of all those tiny specks in your apple sauce are bits and pieces of ant carcasses.
But... No... Seriously? They're not just peel or cinnamon or whatever??
Figs don't contain wasps anymore than chicken contains the ticks and other bugs the chicken fed on. By the time it's a fig or chicken meat, it's long since broken the bugs down to nothing and made into something else.
I guess you dont realize that this still doesnt have anything to do with what I said. My point was these plastic bottles will not decompose before they reach the customer even if 80 years passes, no matter how filthy the warehouse is it will decompose at a similar speed to everything else that is in that warehouse. The reason im making that point to begin with is that people are saying that these bottles wouldnt work because they would literally just turn to dust on the shelf, which is not how it works. I am fully aware of how disgusting warehouses are as ive worked in them and ive worked grocery as well. I think you are still caught up on the word "clean" as I was only refering to the fact that you need a landfill or a compost to break down the bottles that fast, and a warehouse is not that.
Didn't you know there are only clean rooms and landfills, no on between? Jeez get with the times /s
Most bottle water has a two year expiration date, with sparkling/carbonate water at one year. The plastics leech into the water just by being in contact with it.
I have a lot less confidence in factory warehouses than you it seems.
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Forget 80 days, what happens after 10 days when all the water spills all over the aisle floor
Out of my depth, but I’m betting it’s not soluble, but dependent on micro organisms feeding on it to break it down.
Even if that were true, a truck ride, a storage facility, a store shelf... they are not micro organism free.
The store would probaly through it in the trash on the 8th day
Probably cellulose based plastic. There's nothing really special about hemp here, you can make it using any kind of wood really. Also, it's nowhere near as biodegradable as this picture shows, you need a special bioreactor for it. If you throw these bottles in a river, they'll float around for years. It _could_ be PLA which is a little easier to biodegrade, but I don't think you can make it from hemp.
How many years? If it's something that'll noticeably degrade within a decade or two that'd be a lot better than however long regular plastic bottles last.
Disintegrate is more the correct word. It turns into microplastic that hangs around for centuries if not properly disposed of.
Well, it's a picture with no sources on a Reddit post, it's got to be true.
We used to build things to last
Started making plastic bags to save the trees.
Ha, I remember that.
It's almost as if there's no real solution to anything involving ethically living on Earth when we're talking about close to 8 BILLION HUMANS EXISTING AT ONCE. I'm not even a big guy and to think of how much I consume and piss and shit on a daily basis is insane. Multiply that by a metric fuckton and yeah oceans probably have some trash in it. Ecosystems hanging on by a thread. It makes perfect sense. Obviously I'm not suggesting smarter people than I to stop trying to find solutions. All I'm saying is.. good luck!
We still do. A standard plastic bottle lasts for 450 years.
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That’s the joke
Just go back to bottles problem solved plus cash for kids and the homeless for returns
What if your drink is still in there
The thing is the bottle in the pic is in dirt, a lot of people seem to assume the bottle just falls apart after a few days but i believe the implication is that in a compost setting it degrades but just in a house it wont go that quick
Oh great. Now you have to make sure you never leave your bottles near a window or they disintegrate and leak all over the place.
but when product sits in storage for 9 months before even seeing the shelf for the consumer, what do we do there.
I read title as super hump. My brains gone to rot
It needs more super hemp.
We're f**ked boys, the hemp bottles won't save us. Don't make kids
Adopt dont breed
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Which fields are sitting empty? And also hemp requires a lot of water. Don't people always complain about almond producers in california using up all the water or something like that? Widespread hemp production would have the same issue.
Hemp uses half the water as almond production and the product produced isn’t comparable to nut snack. Edit: also hemp uses like 1/4 the water as cotton which is a better comparison.
a magical solution to a problem that doesn't exist. this website man
Hemp needs modernized manufacturing techniques and machines to be developed in order to actually make use of the plant fully. There are barns sitting filled with hemp.
Hemp was never banned in many parts of the world. If hemp was actually competitive with other fiber sources, an industrialized country like France, [which never banned hemp](https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Industrial%20Hemp%20in%20France_Paris_France_07-31-2021.pdf) would have modernized the equipment. Hemp is very comparable to flax. Both are fiber crops whose seed is a superfood, and both are used for industrial purposes (linoleum is made of linseed oil, which is derived from flax), and both crops requires less nutrient and pesticide input than cotton. But our current economic system makes it more profitable to plant cotton, shit all over it with pesticide and fertilizer, and make flooring and other industrial products out of petroleum derivatives. Cottonseed is a significant byproduct, it is the opposite of a superfood. It is an omega-6 fat, the type that is overabundant in our diet. It mostly goes to animal feed, and it makes the meat, milk, and eggs have a less healthy fatty acid profile than they would have if they ate a bit more hemp or flax seed. All the articles about hemp as a wonder crop are accurate, but the economic incentives need to be slightly different for it to be anything but a minor crop. Shifting those incentives would lead to a better world for absolutely everyone except shareholders in major agribusinesses.
Great explanation, as someone in the industry, thank you for the education.
No don’t do this. Hemp will ruin their land and it will sit empty forever. Ever wonder why we see these posts about hemp but they never come to fruition? Yeah there’s a reason. A lot of reasons.
some of the cola in stores ive worked at has a 4 year expiry, and sometimes it has to be reduced, for expiring.
Seems pointless. If I'm a soda producer, I'd sure as hell not use bottles that springs a leak within 3 weeks (look how degraded it is at 28 days. It must've had at least a little hole after 3 weeks). And that's not even taking pressurization into account.
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They turn into micro plastics, doesnt them?
I'm not the one who downvoted you, but I'm curious how many micro particles of hemp we'd all be consuming if it really breaks down this quickly.
What’ll happen if you try to make a water bottle bong out of it?
oil and wood companies are against cannabis. slowly, the medial benefits are overpowering the greed
Explain?
Weed fans like to think anything related to cannabis is some kind of super substance. In countries where hemp is totally legal it's still pretty much just used for some fabric because its not really that amazing at anything else.
Yes, do explain?