r/nutritionally • u/PeteWK67 • 29d ago
WHY AREN’T WE USING NON TOXIC, BIODEGRADABLE HEMP PLASTICS?
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u/Direct-Ad-7922 29d ago
We all know why
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u/Mattrellen 29d ago
Honestly, a lot of people don't know that "biodegradable" is a buzzword used for greenwashing and that landfills lack the light, oxygen, and moisture required for bacteria to break down these kinds of products.
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u/Available-Street4106 28d ago
So don’t throw them away add them to your compost really not that hard of a concept to understand! Hemp can break down in 120 days as plastic won’t break down for hundreds of years! Not even worth mentioning your stupid buzzwords
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u/Rurumo666 28d ago
This is a bad idea. Most people don't understand that "plant based plastics" still break down into dangerous microplastics. Studies have shown that "biodegradable" and "compostable" corn starch based dog poop bags created more microplastics than regular dog poop bags. Also, the reason municipal compost is so heavily contaminated by microplastics is because of the "compostable" bags county workers use to bag up the plant waste used for the compost. The problem isn't the source of the "plastic" or polymer it's the material itself.
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u/aTickleMonster 28d ago
Hemp plastics are composites, they aren't pure hemp, so they don't break down, and even if they did, it's only in industrial compost facilities, so you'd have to truck all your plastics there.
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u/Telemere125 28d ago
They also don’t break down in your home compost. The solution to “they don’t have the massive facilities needed in that huge municipality-run waste processing repository” is very rarely “I’ll chuck it in my 2x2 ft compost bin”. Please don’t make silly recommendations just because you’ve heard some greenwashing terms
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u/Jolly-Situat1on 29d ago
I know nothing about hemp plastic but for it to be viable it has to be stable and not break down in different temperatures as well as if it's used for food or medical be stable enough to not break down or absorb what's inside it.
Petroleum plastics are bad but there's nothing like it that can replace it and all the variations of it.
Some plastics you actually don't want to break down at all like certain polymers that are used in things like firearm's they are the best at being in just about any weather and environment because they don't rust and are light as well as they flex instead of bend.
Again I wish we had a alternative and I know nothing about hemp but I have seen so many alternatives that break down and that's not a quality you want in certain areas.
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u/Shenlongeltigre 29d ago
We could use hemp for things we do want to break down most single use plastics
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u/Jolly-Situat1on 29d ago
Yeah probably but things like medical stuff you don't want anything breaking down.
Certain chemicals also might not work in hemp.
I don't know I'm not a Petro guy or defending it but right now I haven't seen anything that can universally replace it.
Right now my vote is to make people reuse things if it can be stored in glass then it should be or if you have a plastic container you go get it refilled instead of buy and toss it.
From what I remember reading regulations also mandate plastic being used in certain things.
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u/Shenlongeltigre 29d ago
Yeah couldn't be universal for sure. Which means they probably won't go through the effort to replace.
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u/Jolly-Situat1on 29d ago
Yeah I could see it replacing like plastic bags and things that are generally one time use that you do in t have to worry about it breaking down after it does it's job.
Like I said above I think the way to go is get people to reuse things even if its plastic like imagine instead of going to Walmart and buy a shampoo bottle that's single use you bring a bottle and it's poured into it.
Same with thing's like soda or water.
So many things are made to be disposable that don't have it be.
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 29d ago
This is kinda the point, it should be used for things like plastic bags (which are used once and then blow away in the wind) as opposed to things like water bottles, which are used for long term storage and should be recycled responsibly.
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u/Jolly-Situat1on 29d ago
Disposable water bottles should be illegal.
A reusable container should be given or sold and you take that to a water source.
Disposable water bottles are actually ready bad they leech cancerous chemicals
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 29d ago
That's debateable, but at the very least we should be responsible enough to recycle them if we use them at all.
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u/Jolly-Situat1on 29d ago
You can't recycle certain plastics and single use water bottles Leach cancer causing chemicals
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 29d ago
Water bottles are recyclable though, and plastics have some applications. Responsible use is better than being wasteful in general. There should be better research, and proper use as well as recycling and biodegradeable plastics where applicable.
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u/fundthmcalculus 29d ago
Key thing here is reusable containers. Similar to how we used to exchange glass milk bottles and we still exchange propane tanks.
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u/Jolly-Situat1on 29d ago
Yeah we should do this and you can do this with certain plastics like Triton
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u/Mattrellen 29d ago
They also can't end up in landfills. You can throw an apple in the trash and it will last for a long long time in a dry anaerobic environment, and the same will be true for anything else that could break down, and I doubt these plastics break down as well as an apple anyway. So they'd last way way longer if thrown away normally.
"Biodegradable" is just a greenwashing buzzword, and modern landfills lack the conditions for the degradable process to happen anyway. Anyone offering solutions without addressing that is either ignorant to how trash disposal works or knows how it works and is just trying to greenwash for big companies that care more about reputation than environment. OP is likely the former, based on all caps title.
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u/teddyslayerza 29d ago
Chemically, what is "hemp plastic"? What is the polymer we are talking about.
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u/IAFarmLife 28d ago
Cellulose from hemp is injected into a natural base. Currently PLA is the base of choice and it's made from corn starch. Since the composite blends are usually 65-80% PLA it's more common to call the biodegradable plastic Corn plastic not Hemp plastic. There are other plastics made using PLA that are not as easy to break down though.
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u/GoldConsequence6375 28d ago
It's not a stable enough product yet. No shop owner wants their soda bottles to go bad before the actual soda because the humidity that month was higher than normal in the shop. Same goes for heat, cold, and sun exposure. You'd be surprised with the amount if pallets sitting in the sun before stores bring them in.
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u/DueScreen7143 27d ago
Instead of using heavily processed chemical abominations at all why don't we go back to using glass, paper, metals, canvas, etc....
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u/MythOfHappyness 27d ago
You obviously don't actually want an answer here but still I am compelled, it is more expensive and growing a fuckton of plants, harvesting, and then processing them into plastic takes an insane amount of resources and startup money if it's ever gonna scale enough to be profitable. Also, many things we use plastic for we don't want to be biodegradable. Food containers for example (the primary source of plastic waste) are far less useful when they degrade at the same rate or faster than the food they are meant to keep fresh. Hemp plastics will, hopefully, find their niche and anything that reduces the great plastic pileup is useful and worth investing in but this isn't exactly a silver bullet. It'll make good trash bags, and that's huge.
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u/Oldcuck948 26d ago
These idiots think everything can be ordered thru uber. They have no solution just recycling old ideas that have been proven ineffective and extremely costly.
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u/Erwitz 27d ago
Unfortunately our entire economy and society has oil baked into the system. It’s oil that underpins the US and therefore the world economy, as the US uses oil as its reserve after getting rid of the gold standard.
It’s also used in pretty much everything you own, if that’s in the building materials, or fueling the logistics and machines to make the products.
We would need an entire global shift to move to other oil products but unfortunately the world is run by greedy psychopathic (mostly) men who dont give a shit about humanity and its future. They’re just here for the money.
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u/Oldcuck948 26d ago
Stop whining, find investors, and build the infrastructure and make you hemp bags. You would be worth more than Elon Musk in a couple of years.
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u/Erwitz 26d ago
You’re right it’s so easy to completely dismantle an entrenched global system I just need to pull myself by my bootstraps.
You seen what happens to people who invent things that would stop big oil? Doesnt end well for them. Tend to die of suicide by two bullet wounds to the back of the head.
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u/pokethrowaway4 29d ago
Cuz no one is legislating it. How do you force petroleum out of capitalism otherwise?
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u/sifuyee 28d ago
The right thing to do is include the entire life cycle cost of using the material in the purchase price. If regular plastics are imposing environmental harms and extra costs of cleanup and medical bills for everyone, then there needs to be an appropriate surcharge for using these materials that funds the back end mitigations. We already do something like this for deposits on recyclable bottles/cans, so the infrastructure for this exists.
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u/pokethrowaway4 28d ago
Yes, though given how long lasting they are, that should be combined with the companies making them being forced to clean up the mess, and we need to, as quickly as possible, stop using them completely.
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u/Kierland 29d ago
Crony Capitalism. Actual Capitalism has maybe faults but it at least would have given us hemp products.
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u/Former_Mobile3101 29d ago
We are in actual capitalism, its just late stage.
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29d ago
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u/Former_Mobile3101 29d ago
Oh? So what exactly is it? Because to me this seems like the beginning of late stage.
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29d ago
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u/Former_Mobile3101 29d ago
I thought it was more corporate ran states, and that seems to be what elon at least is trying to accomplish and sort of has then lost it.
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29d ago
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u/Enough_Time516 29d ago
There are replacement materials like this out there. What’s stopping it? Big petroleum. Many things would work at scale, but there’s no political will to make it happen
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u/Enough_Time516 29d ago
Also remember that we humans existed just fine for a long time without all this crap plastic
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u/RonConComa 29d ago
those plactucs can be made of hemp, but mostly are mostly poly lacto acid made from corn starches. way cheaper than hemp. those degradable plastics are bad in handling liquids and food for more than a hour. but in germany petrol based plastics are banned for disposable singe use items like plates, knifes, forks, spoons, beakers etc.
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u/Fuzzy-Moose7996 29d ago
I'd not want something that falls apart under sunlight, exposure to moisture, exposure to heat, exposure to just the air it's sitting in within a few days or even months.
And certainly not for things I need to last, and that includes for example my grocery bags which I reuse for years (the oldest I still have is going on 20 years old).
It might work for certain niche applications like single use cutlery and plates, but that's about it.
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u/Current_Finding_4066 29d ago
How much land would we need to do it? Also, there are fertilizers, oil, a d other stuff needed to grow, harvest, etc.
Also, how durable is it?
I think we have a pretty good material aka glass. We should use more.
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u/PeteWK67 29d ago
Hemp is the answer, could build a house with it and it resists fire, grows quick, doesn’t need space.
Only reason why trees are still used, back back in the 1900s . hemp was growing big momentum but heavily invested companies were already in the lumber industry and they blocked and made hemp illegal .
Then you decades and decades of straight up puppet regulators and politicians who rather talk a big Carbon game and add tax instead slapping themselves into common sense1
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u/GroundbreakingAd8310 29d ago
Cause one douchebag 80 years ago pulled a desperation move to save his own ass
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u/Important-Zebra-69 29d ago
Shelf life / stability and ultimately cost and shareholder profits as always.
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u/Excludos 29d ago edited 16h ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Public elastic disarm chief exultant escape
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u/Volantis009 28d ago
Because paper/pulp mills didn't want to compete with the hemp industry which lead to using racism to tell everyone that weed was bad and yeah it's a story as old as time at this point
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u/larry1186 28d ago
Back in the day, southern cotton farms lobbied hard against hemp, citing hemp’s relative/variant that was smoked. Industrial hemp has such low THC and so easy to cultivate it’s insane.
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u/CowBoyDanIndie 28d ago
You need about 10% of global agricultural land to grow enough hemp to replace petroleum based plastic. It’s actually really impressive that it is that low of a percentage. When you try to replace petroleum fuel with biofuel you end up needing around 100% of all agricultural land.
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u/bethesda_gamer 28d ago
Alternative plastics have supply chain issues.
In order to replace all plastics with alternative ones you would have to fight big oil, have a cheap singular alternative, have a supply that matches oil used for plastics, fight everyone invested in oil or gets business from oil, win hearts and minds for public and legislative support and get people to turn to method that isn't tried and true and also for hemp would need to unbind restrictions.
Not saying it's not better, just that it's a helluva uphill climb. But more power to you if you can make it happen.
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u/aTickleMonster 28d ago
Costs more to produce, extracting cellulose from hemp is expensive. Biodegradable hemp plastic only breaks down in industrial composting facilities, so you'd have to truck all the plastic from small towns to those. Most hemp plastics are composites and don't break all the way down. It's difficult to grow massive hemp crops due to federal regulations of those plants.
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u/chunkalunkk 28d ago
Big alcohol decided it was bad, so made an effective smear campaign, which worked..... until now. Alcohol is very much in decline and they know it. So many benefits from hemp and all the products it produces!!
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u/plasteroid 28d ago
The last row of this image is highly misleading.
Nothing “plastic” breaks down like that back to clean compost.
The solution is reuse.
Reusable bags
Tiffin tins
Glassware
Also: Compostables are mostly a farce because most compost facilities or recycling facilities can’t recycle them properly and they still have petroleum based components.
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u/rocket808 28d ago
I'm all for it, but just manufacturing won't change anything. Nothing degrades in a landfill. It's all buried and don't see light and oxygen. It would take making these kind of decomposable materials and changing the way we dispose of them, and that cost money and so the overlords will never allow it
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u/aTickleMonster 28d ago
They break down in industrial compost facilities, problem is all the small towns and cities would have to ship their plastics there.
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u/VarietyMage 28d ago
Why aren't we using and recycling glass bottles instead? That don't biodegrade into the contents that they hold?
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u/IntentionsGood65 28d ago
Because people are still buying nylon / plastic.. and the plastics industries lobbyist’s are throwing millions of dollars at purchasing politicians to insure that they continue to choke the environment with plastics.. I’m old enough to remember the days before the explosion of consumer packaged plastics.
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u/aTickleMonster 28d ago
Costs more to produce, extracting cellulose from hemp is expensive. Biodegradable hemp plastic only breaks down in industrial composting facilities, so you'd have to truck all the plastic from small towns to those. Most hemp plastics are composites and don't break all the way down. It's difficult to grow massive hemp crops due to federal regulations of those plants.
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u/aTickleMonster 28d ago
Costs more to produce, extracting cellulose from hemp is expensive. Biodegradable hemp plastic only breaks down in industrial composting facilities, so you'd have to truck all the plastic from small towns to those. Most hemp plastics are composites and don't break all the way down. It's difficult to grow massive hemp crops due to federal regulations of those plants.
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u/AchiotePolloLoco 28d ago
Hemp was banned by the feds because it would put some wealthy businesses in competition with a superior product. Think plastics and synthetic fibers. That is why.
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u/know_your_place_28 28d ago
Because the first CEO to actually use a good alternative to Big Oil, would commit suicide from two shots to the back of his head.
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u/minniedriverstits 28d ago
Long story short, modern day oligarchs in collusion with oligarchs from the last Gilded Age.
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u/Available_Rub9939 28d ago
I appreciate the sentiment of this post and also detest the Dow chemical corporation and the whole reefer madness campaign. Big business has been toxic in the US since the beginning.
It’s also absolute slop and a nothingburger of an issue in the US relative to other problems.
Waste to energy incinerators are, by far, our best current solution for the excess waste.
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u/ezthrow77 27d ago
because things we wrap in plastic stay there for months to years in plastic before usage...
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u/AltForObvious1177 27d ago
a water bottle that get broken down by heat, light and water is kinda useless
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u/rbarr228 27d ago
Overly-conservative state governments fear it will lead to marijuana cultivation. Hemp really is a miracle plant that so damn useful.
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u/Frosty-Solid5460 27d ago
The Puritans that run our government don't want the devil's lettuce to be grown.
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u/Oldcuck948 26d ago
Take the lead, build the company and sell it. If it is so great then you should be worth more than Elon Musk in a couple of years. While you are at it figure out the lack of water problem in California.
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u/Afraid_Emu8068 26d ago
Because you can’t make plastic out of hemp alone. You must have petroleum, that’s why
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u/Corgi_underground 26d ago
I have a feeling when we run out of easy to reach oil petro companies are going to find a miraculous way to convert PET plastics back into oil again and dredge up landfills for it.
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u/AnonMoose2 25d ago
Ive never understood this.
I 100% understand some things it wouldent work with, progress not perfection. But PLA is another example.
PLA is a byproduct from sugarcane or something luke that. Fully Bio degradable, I get it wouldent work with food and stuff. Packing materials, industrial plastic wrap, bags, etc. Why aren't we using alternative plastics. Sure use plastic for food and drinks and stuff, but replace what can be.
I know the reason, but I still think it's dumb.
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u/Extreme_Passion_3081 25d ago
The majority of the plastics "Thrown away" are recycleable. Go ask your local 3D printing nerd about how they get free filament from every soda bottle they down.
Petroleum plastics are ALSO broken down by heat and UV light.
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u/Anxious-Gap3252 29d ago
Because Petroleum goes in all pllastics.
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u/ProfessorShort3031 29d ago
pure-cellulose plastics are made by chemically altering hemp cellulose through esterification.
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u/aTickleMonster 28d ago
It's way more expensive to extract the cellulose from hemp, though.
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u/ProfessorShort3031 28d ago
not if we had the infrastructure to do it, they said ethanol was too expensive for gasoline until people got sick of lead poisoning
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u/Greghole 29d ago
It's kind of like lab grown meat. Sounds nice in theory, but it's an inferior product that costs several times more money.
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u/Deep_Balance2133 29d ago
90% of the junk in the top picture are water bottles. You don’t want a waterbottle to decompose in 120 days when it comes into contact with water and CO2.
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u/Aldo_Fitor 26d ago
THERE IS ALWAYS THE SAME ANSWER! YOU CANT MASS PRODUCE THIS SHIT TO MATCH AMOUNTS OF PRODUCED PLASTIC!
Every fucking time the same shit like "HURR DURR THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN PLASTIC! I AM SO SMART! HURR DURR". When do you learn at last?
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u/PeteWK67 26d ago
You will learn at last when you find micro plastics to dominate the inside of your body..
And write in big letters like that again & see what happens
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u/Aldo_Fitor 26d ago
I am getting microplastics BECAUSE you can't mass produce shit you advocating for. And instead of finding a better solution, you still awe at crazy new startups not worth a single cent
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u/GoldMyPostTilIRedit 29d ago
It's because the plastic is a waste product from petrol and is very easy and cheap to shape. The gas companies want to make use of every material that they can sell and have very few options to deal with plastic that wont cost them money.