Monday, August 20, 2018

Chop sticks or plastic cutlery? Which is more enviro friendly?

"Wood a million times over. Wood can and should be significantly more green than plastic at every point in its lifecycle.

"The post use waste side of the issue has been covered* but another favorable aspect of wood products is the eco-friendliness of wood product manufacture. Plastics release many toxins in to the air during manufacture, including acetone, styrene, and toluene. Wood on the other hand can be processed significantly more cleanly. Trees can be cut using greener logging technologies, mills can be run using solar^ or other green energy sources, and shaping machinery can also be run with green energy sources. Saw dust left behind from the processing of wood can simply be burnt or put to use as an absorbant. There's no drilling, no hydraulic fracking, and no environmentally catastrophic spills like there are with oil [which is used to make] plastics."
*waste side:

"Assuming you're talking about the typical disposable chopsticks made of bamboo, they can be composted without special equipment (although it may take a couple years in slow conditions). Plastic forks, on the other hand, will take a very long time to degrade and likely won't be recycled. Even "compostable" plastic is nowhere near as degradable as bamboo"

Also, wood products are typically shipped hundreds of miles to North American consumers, while petroleum products have been shipped thousands of miles.

^ pretty hard to find any links to actual solar powered sawmills, because they are pretty power-hungry...

As you can see, its a lot of solar panels...they say at 0;57 they installed a four-fold excess of capacity just in case.

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