I was not expecting Sellotape to make me ponder the definition of “plastic” today. But my departmental stationary cupboard has “zero plastic sellotape” (similar to Scotch tape, if you’re from the USA).
Plant-based things can be made non-biodegradable, bamboo fabric being the obvious eg - it’s rayon, which contribute to plastic marine waste & doesn’t decompose. And this “zero-plastic” tape will only compost in an industrial composter.
If it looks like plastic and quacks like plastic… #plastic
@feditips Wanting others to see the conversation to which I'm replying here, discovered an issue I've not experienced before, & hope for your advice please? I used "open original page" earlier to see all replies & there was a vibrant conversation (my instance now shows 21 posts from 14 participants). Now if I #OpenOriginalPage for the initial post https://fediscience.org/@helenczerski/110894945034117659 I see only the first & last posts... a fraction of the riches contributed. What's happening here? #MastoHelp @helenczerski
That looks like some kind of bug, the difference is in the wrong direction and absolutely massive.
Sometimes you get a difference but normally it's the other way round (with original page having lots of posts).
I'll try to see if anyone has reported this on the github.
EDIT: Looks like my reply does show up on the original page thread, so I am wondering if this was a temporary fault on the original author's server which has now gone?
@feditips Maybe! Thanks for investigating. Let's ask the FediScience administrator @FrankSonntag - Frank, is this possible?
(I saw the missing posts on original page about 12 hours ago, so the glitch if any might have been in the time window approx 00:00-07:00 UTC today 5 Oct.) @helenczerski
This was most likely caused by fairly short remote content retention period.
Since this is confusing and intransparent to our people I have now turned off cache cleanup for remote posts (but not for remote media) and we will deal with any disk-space issues if and when required.
Those are two separate settings, one for posts, one for media - plus a third for user archives.
The problem is that remote posts cannot be fetched and therefore are not cached again. Something that wasn't clear to me when I turned on the cleanup and making it a pretty dangerous setting.
If they were there 12 hours ago and disappeared today, then it definitely sounds like some kind of server problem rather than anything working normally.
@helenczerski this can be confusing for users, an example of this ambiguity is the single use bio plastic bags made from ethanol in Brasilia that replaced traditional ones..
@helenczerski hmm. My organic food store offers plant-based clear bags (instead of plastic) for buying veggies, but they don't feel like cellophane. They feel stretchy. Maybe I'll find out more about those 🤔
@helenczerski Rayon aka viscose aka bamboo fabric aka artificial silk is pretty much the same thing as Cellophane. Which is what Sellotape originally was (who knows now?).
Those are made from any plant high in cellulose. It's a kind of plastic, one of the earliest, and at least it can come from renewable plants rather than oil or coal.
It's hardly compostable in an industrial machine. Package looks like greenwashing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayon
@helenczerski Looks like the Nescafé gambit? Where their coffee pods are “compostable” for marketing purposes, but the reality is that you need to ship empty pods back to them. A step in the right direction, but a strong whiff of greenwashing.
@helenczerski how is rayon a plastic? In the US, we label acetate separately from cellulosic rayon, which should be as biodegradable as cotton or linen.
@gspeng A significant proportion of marine plastic pollution is rayon, so if you care about having a material that will biodegrade, it fits the functional definition of plastic more than not.
@helenczerski I don’t understand. Which definition of rayon are using? It’s defined more narrowly in some countries. What is the chemical composition and the source of this rayon?
@helenczerski Worth noting that the process to make rayon isn’t exactly environmentally friendly, either, but I don’t know how it compares to other artificial fibres.
@helenczerski@Havant_Enviro Do you have more reading on that? What I could find (thanks Wikipedia!) points to rayon being at least as biodegradable as cotton (https://doi.org/10.1002/app.20879) and also that ocean microfibers might be largely cotton or rayon, the distinction being difficult after partial degradation (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay8493). Apart from that, depending one's perspective, undegraded cellulose could be seen as both a stable carbon sink and dietary fibre, so not necessarily bad?
I think one of the big 'selling' points of anything bamboo is that it's fast growing.
I have a bamboo topped desk and kitchen cutting boards.
I have always wondered what they use to glue those bamboo ply's together with. There are so many ply's/layers, I imagined there was as much glue as bamboo, but I might be wrong.
@helenczerski to me, one of the bonuses is that if it got into nature for whatever reason, it'd decompose/dissolve over time. But... yeah, that's about ir
@buerviper Well, it won’t - that’s part of the problem. It meets the standard for “industrial composting”, which means that if you put it in a very specialised vessel in the right conditions, THEN it will decompose. But it won’t otherwise. So out in the natural environment, it’s pretty much like any other plastic. The Big Compost Experiment did some very good work on this recently, but there’s plenty of other evidence that shows the same thing.
@helenczerski oh didn't know that, I thought it would just decompose really slowly. Your not supposed to put PLA plastic bags in your biodegradable waste in Germany, but only becauses it decomposes much more slowly. That's why I thought it'd decompose eventually! What about animals that eat it accidentally, do you know about that?
@helenczerski@buerviper I've tried home-composting some of the items that claim to be home compostable (biodegradable magazine cover bags, biodegradable disposable plastic drinks cups). They basically all came out looking the same as they went in and ended up being put in the landfill waste. I also don't know if that stuff can be put in normal recycling bins, so its kind of the worst of both worlds.
@steve I have had similar disappointments with home #composting, but one clear magazine-cover bag composted beautifully & seemed fine for protection. I asked at the time for details of the film & its producer but no info was forthcoming. I have been frustrated at the lack of real-world feedback & discussion. #CambridgeUniversity could usefully combine its #MaterialScience expertise with user experiments at scale...
Add comment