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Food based plastics real alternative to oil based
by LotusFlower | July 10, 2008 at 06:40 pm | 313 views | 6 comments
The idea of using food based plastics instead of oil based is an old idea being revisited as oil prices soar and environmental issues take cetre stage.
Landfills and plastics don't mix well. It takes several hundred years for an oil-based plastic bottle to breakdown in a landfill. And plastics can consume as much as 25% of the landfill space, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration.
Those two problems are helping drive innovation into new bioplastic packaging material at research institutions including Missouri University Science and Technology. There, researchers are cooking up recipes for super-biodegradable plastics that decompose in a few months.
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July 10, 2008 at 06:40 pm by LotusFlower, 313 views, 6 comments
Author
Crowd Power
don.kelly.diaz
Brooklyn, New York, United States
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Comments (6)
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zichiat 02:55 on July 11th, 2008
LotusFlower, I like this story. It's good stuff.
I was living in the Japan Alps with my Japanese wife, when they held the 1998 Winter Olympics. Nagano Prefecture (county/state) was the site of these Olympics, beautiful place with alpine mountains.
Anyway, Nagano is famous for its apples, the best I have ever tasted, big, like four or five times the size of an English one. Very juicy. Japanese apple trees would not normally grow in the Japan Alps because of the severe winters. Can be up to 5 months long but 3-4 months is more usual with snow so deep, like 2-3 meters (10-12 feet). About 80 years ago a Japanese guy had a brain wave and took the lower half of an English apple tree and grafted it to the top half of a Japanese one. This English-Japanese apple tree now flourishes all over Nagano.
Well, when the Winter Olympics came round they wanted to keep it green and they invented a way to make 'plastic plates, cups saucers, spoons, forks, knives,' from apples. They were great! Just great! Looked good, but everything Japanese does anyway. They looked like plastic, they felt like plastic, they washed like plastic, and strong, would last quite some time. But when they are thrown away they just biograde back into the soil.
Now no one wanted to use the best apples off the trees, apples here, are very expensive, but most fruit is. So for a couple of years before the 'plastic production' began they collected the apples which had fallen on the ground, Another recycling point there.
I don't know why this is not more common.
Normal plastics are difficult to recycle because they need to be sorted into the same kind of plastic, like PET bottles, but a company in the Ukraine, an English company have come up with a method that all plastics can be recycled together, bottles bags etc and be turned into plastic roof tiles. The equipment is cheap and simple and can be used on a local level to recycle and create employment.
Two simple answers to a very complicated problem!!!
at 03:02 on July 11th, 2008
LotusFlower, I like this story. It's good stuff.
Good Idea, Australia is making Corn based Ball point pens and in Europe as well. However, Food products used for this can cause another food shortage as did Methanol!
It may be far better to focus of waist rather than Food products, and with the use of garbage we would also reduce the land field problems! (RRR)
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zichiat 03:40 on July 11th, 2008
paschen but like I said in my comments you can use the foodstuff which can't be consumed by humans like apples on the ground, full of worms etc but still good for ciher.
at 03:53 on July 11th, 2008
Yes, you are correct, yet I doubt that big industry will bother with that, they just make a machine to harvest cost effective and may even put some of the good apples on the ground for the worm to eat! I had to eat the Fruits with worms as a child, My mother always said they are good for you! I fine today and maybe because of the worms! :)
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zichiat 04:11 on July 11th, 2008
the best material is cellulose which is any plant material....
at 04:27 on July 11th, 2008
I did patent a process in 1988, to make paper and paper products out of waist products and mainly hemp and grass! I was to early I suppose, never could get any one interested in it! The patent expired after 17 years and I did not have another $10,000.00 to invest in a new International patent!