The end of plastic? New plant-based bottles will degrade in a year

[lordsummerisle]

theguardian.com

Beer and soft drinks could soon be sipped from “all-plant” bottles under new plans to turn sustainably grown crops into plastic in partnership with major beverage makers.

A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/the-end-of-plastic-new-plant-based-bottles-will-degrade-in-a-year

[TheFarseer]

1. Thank God

That sounds like just what we need. I’ve been reading that recycling plastic is basically a joke foisted on us by the plastic industry so that we won’t demand anti plastic legislation.

[Baked Potato]

2. Hope it works.

[virgogal]

3. I detest plastic.Even

when making lunches for my kids years ago I used wax paper and paper bags.I like my peanut butter in glass jars etc.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

4. Plant sugars

I hope diabetics can use them. I hope so.

[Canoe52]

5. Let's hope this will be our new plastic! Tired of having to buy everything in plastic.

[NickB79]

6. We've already cleared most of the world's prairies for cropland

Forests are falling rapidly as well.

Where shall we get enough fertile land, not currently used for food, fiber, lumber, or wildlife habitat, to grow the hundreds of billions of tons of raw material annually?

Short of everyone going vegetarian to free up existing cropland, that is.

Oh, and not in competition for land we want to plant trees on for carbon sequestration.

[lordsummerisle]

7. Here's the company who came up with this:

https://www.avantium.com/

if you want to tell them they're wasting their time...

[NickB79]

8. All "biomass will save us" proposals are wasting our time

Without either a massive switch to a plant based diet, or a substantial drop in world population, we simple don't have any extra arable land left. If anything, we need to start restoring farmland to forests and grasslands while we still can, before the soil is too degraded and water resources too depleted.

Biomass as a replacement for oil is a pipe dream.

[lordsummerisle]

9. You should enlighten them n/t

[NickB79]

10. Why? No one is listening

The Ogallalla Aquifer will fail in the next 30 yr from overpumping and vast parts of the central US breadbasket will be forced back to shortgrass prairie on their own. That's around the same time we're expected to hit 9 billion mouths to feed and serious climate destruction setting in.

Not gonna be much land left for sufficient crops, much less biomass plastic or biofuels.

[lordsummerisle]

11. Someone must be listening n/t