Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Good News on the Environment For a Change: Plastics-Free Grocery Store Aisle Debuts in the Netherlands


Good News on the Environment For a Change: Plastics-Free Grocery Store Aisle Debuts in the Netherlands!

Read the text and watch the video:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/28/europe/ekoplaza-plastic-free-supermarket-aisle/index.html

This kind of effort is long overdue. Our streets, rivers, and oceans are filling up with both large and microscopic piece of plastic and there is really no reason for it to continue except for our unwillingness to pay a little more at the grocery store to do better.

Polymers, the building blocks of plastics, can be made from plant materials (corn, sugar, soybeans, etc.) and these plastics are biodegradeable. We can't keep hoping that everyone will recycle all their plastic. We just need to design systems that are sustainable no matter how the average person behaves. These "plastics" will just biodegrade when people toss them on the street or they flow into rivers. I look forward to the day when it's virtually impossible for anyone to litter with plastics!


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1 comment:

  1. GeorellenMarch 16, 2018 at 1:08 PM

    And then there's evolution...as we evolve solutions to reduce the generation of plastic waste, nature is busy on its own evolutionary pathways to access the energy contained in our heretofore non-biodegradable wastes:

    Bugs are apparently adapt(ing) to eat some of this stuff, closing the loop, so to speak:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/25/plastic-eating-bugs-wax-moth-caterpillars-bee

    http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-bacteria-eat-plastic-20160310-story.html

    Right now humans are generating more waste than the environment can assimilate. Can nature catch up with us (and at what price)?

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