Scientists may have found the answer to manufacturing plastics products that actually break down without forming into microplastics.
  • blazera@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    We have a lot of options for materials that completely decompose. The challenge is materials that only decompose when you want them to, and not while theyre sitting on store shelves

    • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
      0·
      2 months ago

      I wonder why we shifted away from things like waxed paper milk cartons(like the small ones you’d get in school) and waxed butcher paper?

      Is waxed paper/cardboard product really that much more expensive than plastic in terms of packaging?

      • Aux@lemmy.world
        01·
        2 months ago

        Because wax production has numerous negative impacts on the environment: higher energy costs (which lead to higher product costs), deforestation (in case of soy or palm based wax), impact on bee population (in case of bee wax), etc.

        Plastics are just better materials for pretty much everything.

  • masquenox@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    Oh, nice… techno-solution No. 456927493923990003038. You know… the same ole’ techno-solutions they’ve been promising us will solve all the capitalism-instigated problems (ie, problems that aren’t technological in nature) since at least the 80s?

    I’ll just go ahead and file this with the rest.

    • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 months ago

      No one said its a magic wand, it’s one of many things that could potrntislly help reduce the damage we do to the ecosystem.

      Yes capitalism bad but there’s eight billion people on the planet so a communist system would also need modern materials to allow everyone to live a good life.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        No one said its a magic wand,

        Of course they don’t say it’s a “magic wand…” even the media doesn’t think you’re that stupid.

        it’s one of many things that could potrntislly help reduce the damage we do to the ecosystem.

        So when do they start? As I’ve already implied - they’ve been enthusiastically peddling “techno-fixes” to these problems since at least the 80s (I know because I was there), and they haven’t made much of a dent, have they? Does it perhaps have something to do with the fact that the problems caused by capitalism isn’t technological, perhaps?

        so a communist system would also need modern materials to allow

        If the problems aren’t technological it means modern materials isn’t the problem, is it?

        • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 months ago

          The problem is caused by eight billion people wanting to live full lives with meaning and purpose.

          I guess your childhood was very different to mine, or more likely you’d currently living in a sealed community like the Amish but locked to cassette decks and big hair. For those of us living in reality things have changed massively since the 80s, even the US has more solar generation than coal generation, electric car usage is starting to dent oil demand, work from home and automation is starting to reduce commuting - but you wouldn’t know about these things because they’re only possible due to lots of advances that happened since you got frozen in the time bubble.

          No its not perfect, life is hugely complex and global society even more so but less people die of dysentery every year, more industries move to sustainable models and ecologically safe practices all the time, and new options for people trying to create solutions reach the market everyday.

          What do you think we should do? Shut off the oil snd let billions die as global society collapsed and chaos is unleashed as billions od desperate people destroy everything in a panic? Or more likely you don’t have a solution because you don’t care it’s just an empty argument to help you avoid reality.

          If you install a communist system will people magically not want food and water and entertainment? Did Deng modernise Mao s vision because the revolutionaries were all secretly CIA agents or because it’s.not actually very easy to create a fully working centrally planned economy?

          Just saying capitalism is the problem doesn’t help anyone if your only solution is wishing upon a star.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
            0·
            2 months ago

            yet more inane blathering

            I thought that only tankies resort to flooding a reply with bullshit whining to try and deflect from the point - yet here you are, liberal.

            I guess you really aren’t that different.