Post by account_disabled on Feb 20, 2024 0:19:38 GMT -6
Single-use tableware such as cups, plates and take-out containers are a huge source of waste. Even if they are considered compostable, they may end up in a landfill, where they will not decompose without the specific conditions found in composting facilities. And eco-friendly food containers are typically more expensive than plastic, so the initial cost can be a barrier to adoption for both consumers and restaurants. Now, scientists say they have found a solution: Tableware that can decompose naturally in 60 days and is more affordable than compostable plastic, because it is made from sugar cane and bamboo waste. Kristin Toussaint tells FastCompany that when Hongli Zhu, an associate professor at Northeastern University and co-author of a paper exposing the new material in Matter magazine , first came to the United States in 2007, she said she was surprised by the amount of single-use containers that were in stores, restaurants and in the trash cans of their seminars. If you look at the entire population, I can't imagine how much plastic waste this type of single-use packaging generates on Earth. People try to use human-made materials, but I think we should look to nature. Nature has a lot to offer. Hongli Zhu, associate professor at Northeastern University.
His team at Northeastern decided to start with sugarcane bagasse, or the pulp byproduct of sugarcane extraction. In 2021, Brazil alone is expected to produce 39.5 million tons of sugar from its sugarcane harvest, and for every 10 tons of sugarcane crushed during extraction, around three tons of pulp are produced. This makes it cheap and environmentally friendly, since it is already wasteful, Zhu says. The problem is that the sugar fiber is short, so from a mechanical point of view, sugar cane residue is not as strong. We made a hybrid, mixing the shorter fibers with the long bamboo fiber… …to improve mechanical resistance. Work team. The pulp of the two fibers is molded into plates, bowls and containers. Making bowls, cups and containers Europe Cell Phone Number List from bamboo alone would be more expensive, he added, and would still require all the water use and emissions associated with growing and harvesting more bamboo. This is also why Zhu stayed away from wood pulp, a common material for compostable packaging. " That's biodegradable of course, but the cost is much higher than using sugar industry waste, and from an environmental point of view, if we use wood, we need to plant trees to do it ," she says. Her team also avoided fibers made from recycled paper, as they may contain residual inks or chemicals. And, unlike plastic which needs to be recycled (and often isn't; in New York City, 5% of plastic dishes enter the recycling system) or PLA, which requires industrial composting and temperatures Above 140 degrees Fahrenheit, bamboo and sugar cane items can be buried directly in the ground.
When the northeast team buried this tableware in the ground, it began to deform after 30 days and completely lost its shape and gradually disappeared within 60 days. " The chemical component at the end is cellulose, it's the same chemical compound in grass, from a tree in your yard ," says Zhu. The result, the researchers say, is clean, sustainable and strong packaging with a manufacturing process that emits 97% less CO2 emissions than polystyrene plastic production, and 67% less than paper products and the PLA, a common biodegradable plastic. The cost is also cheaper than biodegradable plastic, at $2,333 per ton compared to $4,750 per ton for PLA production, and close to that of polystyrene, which comes toper ton. You can do many simple things: Use low consumption appliances. Switch to LED lights. Automate lights with sensors. Use smart thermostats. Take advantage of natural light. Provide staff with laptop computers instead of desktop computers. Saving money and saving the planet are not mutually exclusive. Use green web hosting services Websites use energy too. The servers that host a website's data are constantly on, consuming copious amounts of power. Fortunately, businesses can choose where their data is stored. Increasingly, eco-conscious companies are offsetting that energy use to become carbon neutral. Google has done a lot to decarbonize its data centers and claims that its cloud services produce net zero carbon emissions. And the largest cloud computing provider in existence, Amazon, has promised to achieve the same by 2040 through wind and solar farms.