The future of plastic

Shoes ,the label says VEGAN material by which they mean plastic.Surely my years old leather boots are more environmentally effective ,if the cow has been eaten and the leather used .I hate plastic on my feet ,I bought a pair last year and my feet sweated so much it was like wearing a mobile puddle .

Plastic is a very recent thing as it's only been in common use for 80 - 100 years. I'm sure that biodegradeable items could replace it entirely. Of course, we'll never get it out of our seas, food and bodies - we even inhale it.

Chestnut I heard that some hospitals do not accept back crutches, walking sticks or Zimmer frames which have been used on a temporary basis because it is too difficult and expensive to sterilise this equipment.

At one time fleeces were advertised as being made from recycled plastic bottles.

It is still plastic, not single use but what happens to them in the end?

Acrylic fabrics?
Acrylic yarns?

Made from acrylonitrile.

Prior to 2010, some Tupperware contained BPA. I think it was primarily the opaque items that are stiffer.
BPA is linked to obesity in both children and adults, developmental delay, heart disease, endocrine disorders (I think especially in girls), diabetes, breast cancer, and lots of other things.
There was also a woman in America who was making it her mission to test "everyday items" for heavy metals and other poisons. She's been doing it a few years now. I'll see if I can find a link - but it made me dispose of a good chunk of my Tupperware even though I found it useful.

We know so much now than ever before about toxicity but are still learning. SueDonim, please take a look.

Hello,
I can't find the article I read but here's one from the 'Metro"
metro.co.uk/2019/08/24/mum-warns-parents-against-old-tupperware-after-finding-it-contains-lead-and-arsenic-10623825/

Thanks for that, Notspaghetti. It’s interesting but not terribly scientific. It says the woman tested her items - it doesn’t say how, or whether she used a bona fide laboratory.

My items aren’t the solid type and because they’re storage items they don’t get washed that often therefore haven’t degraded, so I’ll go on using them for now.

Some of the infection in ICU is so deadly that there is no way they would risk sterilisation and reuse Chestnut . The nurses told me that often the bedding used by very high risk patients is often destroyed after use too .

A pretty useless article. The lady had them tested but the article does not say what level of these heavy metals were found in these items, whether they would be released into the child if they chewed them and how these levels compared with government recommendations for acceptable levels.

Another one of these scare articles that are far too vague for anyone to give any credence to them. There could be more of these metals in the air the child is breathing than in the Tupperware. We just do not know.

Biodegradable plastics are a nightmare product, there are so many different types that breakdown in different ways over different time frames. Some dont actually break down at all despite the claims.

It would be better to incinerate the lot in proper high temperature incinerators and capture the energy.

Well, my Tupperware was my child's favourite toy!
Lead and arsenic?

And I am still using it 52 years later

felice I couldn't agree with you more. I've posted before about the danger of hot meals being given in non-sealable paper containers - the gravy running all over the place, the curry slopping onto the car seats.

Just after Christmas, my 80 year old friend who had gone to collect a take-away, saw this happening and reached out to stop the carton tipping over.
She swerved, hit a small tree on the grass verge and wrote off her car.
Fortunately she was unhurt, just shocked but now she has no vehicle thanks to this lunacy and baa-baa thinking.

Here is some Tupperware info - the results here are for the yellow plastic measuring spoons/scoops:
When tested with an XRF instrument, the “Daffodil Yellow” vintage (c, 1972) Tupperware measuring cups had the following readings:

Lead (Pb): 2,103 +/- 41 ppm
Arsenic (As): 250 +/- 28 ppm
Chromium (Cr): 735 +/- 68 ppm
Zinc (Zn): 463 +/- 18 ppm
Nickel (Ni): 20 +/- 8 ppm
Iron (Fe): 51 +/- 19 ppm
Vanadium (V): 239 +/- 155 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 10,100 +/- 400 ppm
For Context: The amount of Lead that is considered toxic in a newly manufactured item intended for use by children in America (where Tupperware originates) is anything 90 ppm Lead or higher in the paint or coating, or 100 ppm Lead (or higher) in the substrate.

I still can’t find the original info and obviously people will go on using it, but like the new “bamboo” cups/mugs and plates they are apparently leaking chemicals into our foods (and our children’s foods). The bamboo is generally leaking formaldehyde rather than arsenic, cadmium and lead etc. but it’s a similar issue.

My children loved my Tupperware scoops etc and used to chew on them. I don’t want my grandchildren doing the same.

Incineration is pretty toxic too David's. The really small particulates, the nasty stuff, go straight through the filters and into the atmosphere to be dropped downwind.

Sorry Davidhs. And I did check it too!

I can`t see us seeing the end of plastic it`s everywhere.
And the government wants us to stop using it.
How about making the manufacturers do the wright thing buy not making plastic.
Also we now have plastic money introduced by the same people who are telling us not to use it ? seriously.

I was watching a beach being cleared of plastic on Coast on tv. I kept wondering what was then going to happen to this. Would it eventually end up in the sea again?
I read that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.

I know of no plans to get rid of plastic, just single use plastics that ends up clogging up our sea and countryside.

The landfill waste from my LA area goes to a waste incinerator. All such incinerators have to meet very high particulate and noxious gas standards and I remember reading sometime ago that the emissions from such furnaces can be cleaner than the air they are emitted into.

I like that idea MOnica I was at one of the garden festivals back in the 1980s where a garden was built next to, or on top of, a landfill site! The methane gas coming from the waste was being used to power the gardens. I wonder what became of those ideas.

I see Glastonbury will be using an anaerobic digester for power this year. Of course that's using slurry not plastic but researchers are working on generating electricity from plastic waste.

There is a new facility in Gloucestshire, M0nica which has been mired in controversy. The aim is to reduce landfill by incineration unrecyclable waste and thus power 25,000 homes and recovering metals, but ER and other groups did everything possible to try to prevent this opening.

We need answers not protests.

Sorry, that sounds like gobbledegook and not what I typed.

By incinerating non-recycleable waste
In Gloucestershire

I am often defeated by the logic of some protest groups. They walk the walk (and cause endless disruption), talk the the talk, but do not seem to think the think. ER is one such, but 10 years ago we had a local group who did the same sort of thing over a local issue.

15/20 years or so ago there were protests here against an incinerator being built upwind of Norwich. The tiny noxious particles (the sort which can go through lung walls), many known to be cancer causing, couldn’t be filtered out and apparently usually dropped at a distance over half a mile away - depending on the strength of the wind.

The main problem with it was the fact it couldn’t be turned down but had to burn at full power 363 days a year (2 days off pa for cleaning). This drastically discouraged recycling / reusing. Of course this was fifteen plus years ago so things may have changed. There may be more restrictions on what can be burnt. Mechanical Biological Treatment and Anaerobic Digesters were much better as they are sealed, but also much more expensive to build. In the end, an incinerator was built in Suffolk.

Also, modern landfill sites are pretty good nowadays. They are sealed below and the methane produced is collected for power. Energy from Waste!