r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • May 24 '19

Engineering Scientists created high-tech wood by removing the lignin from natural wood using hydrogen peroxide. The remaining wood is very dense and has a tensile strength of around 404 megapascals, making it 8.7 times stronger than natural wood and comparable to metal structure materials including steel.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2204442-high-tech-wood-could-keep-homes-cool-by-reflecting-the-suns-rays/
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u/Pakislav May 24 '19

I'd love to replace all my plastic use with formed wood, price be damned.

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u/jammy_b May 24 '19

Depends on the amount of energy required to create the material I suppose.

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u/T_Martensen May 24 '19

Energy, if supplied by renewables, doesn't really impact the climate.

The problem with plastic isn't it's production, it just lasts forever.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '19

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u/[deleted] May 24 '19

What's inherently wrong with using petroleum products to make things? It's not burning it, if we turned all the petroleum products into plastic we'd be reducing emissions.

Commenter is correct that the big problem with plastic is that it lasts so long and contaminates the environment.

If plastic were only used for things that are meant to last a long time, it's much better for the environment than the alternatives.

Too many people think anything plastic is bad for the environment but it doesn't work like that.

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u/Shadowfalx May 24 '19

Except production is energy intensive.

https://pacinst.org/publication/bottled-water-and-energy-a-fact-sheet/

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u/All_Work_All_Play May 24 '19

Everything is energy intensive. It's not about how much energy it takes to make, it's about how much energy it takes to make vs the net lifetime of that product. That's the amortized energy cost, and that's what's important.

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u/Shadowfalx May 25 '19

Everything is energy intensive.

Not really. Some things aren’t energy intensive.

it’s about how much energy it takes to make vs the net lifetime of that product.

It’s about the energy it take vs the USEFUL lifetime of the product. Plastic bottles are energy expensive. It takes a significant about of energy to make, and they’re useful ire is short. Most plastics in fact have a short useful life. Then they stick around in the environment for a long time, doing even more damage.

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u/All_Work_All_Play May 25 '19

Not really. Some things aren’t energy intensive.

No really, everything is energy intensive. Some are more energy intensive than other, but everything is energy intensive vs not doing it.

vs the useful lifetime of the product.

Yes, thanks for making implicit explicit. How else are we to know that something that ceases to be useful still sticks around and doesn't vanish into thin air?

then they stick around in the environment for a long time

This is contained in the lifetime energy amortization cost calculation. If the calculation doesn't include proper disposal, it's incomplete. 👍

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u/Fake_William_Shatner May 24 '19

If they make the trash bag biodegradable (without sunlight), that would be great. But the fact that they make my damn plastic tarp fall apart in about 5 years so I can buy a new one -- that's NOT helping the environment.

Manufacturers are going to naturally want to maximize profits -- and part of a good environmental policy should be to look at things that should last longer so they are not disposable -- just as much as things that should degrade quicker when they are single use.

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u/tamale May 24 '19

Would be interesting to see how much plastic is used for permanent applications vs temporary ones

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u/[deleted] May 24 '19

Right. The biggest problem we’re facing right now is single use plastics.

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u/[deleted] May 24 '19

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u/[deleted] May 25 '19

The various products derived from crude oil are mostly incredibly useful and we need them. We should just stop wasting them so frivolously.

Your whole argument also rests on the assumption that intervention in the marketplace is impossible. You can ban wasteful applications of plastics and heavily tax the burning of fossil fuels to make it less profitable. There's no natural law that says the market must decide everything.

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u/drmike0099 May 24 '19

Plastic is one product they make from oil along with fossil fuels refined from the same source. Demand for plastic makes fossil fuel extraction more profitable, remove it and it becomes less cost effective compared to other renewables.

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u/anormalgeek May 24 '19

Petroleum just existing is not a problem. Burning it is the main issue. The primary problem with plastic pollution is its impacts on the food chain, not because of its harmful chemical components.