Posted by Michele
on March 24, 2008, 21:18:20, in reply to "Biodegradable Plastics"
Actually, I've been reading about this waste. Here's a quote from an article about plastic waste that shows how the waste can be used for insulation (it's one of many uses, but this one seems most doable):
"Plastic waste is increasingly becoming an eyesore and is polluting the environment, especially in high
mountain villages where no garbage collection system exists. A large amount of plastic is being
brought into the tourist trekking regions (PET and HDPE bottles, food wrappers, PVC and plastic
bags used for transport and packing materials) and discarded or burned. This plastic waste can be
perfectly reused as source material for thermal insulation. When separated into “clean” and “lessclean”,
it can be packed in PP fibre bags and utilized as insulation material inside housing, under
greenhouses and around high altitude biogas reactors. The plastic waste can also be used to insulate
water piping of solar water heaters. In this way a common waste product is turned into a high valued
thermal insulator which is extremely needed in the high altitudes to conserve warmth and reduce
firewood consumption. A comparative table of insulation values is include."
http://www.icimod.org/snv/snvpapers/Plastic%20Waste%20Insulation.pdf
--Previous Message--
: Something just occurred to me. The plant
: next to my work makes biodegradable
: plastic bags. You might have heard of
: them, they are called NatureWorks .
:
: Anyway, they're process is mostly
: evironmentally friendly from what I
: know of it. The problem seems to be the
: by-products and I haven't really heard
: anybody talk about that.
:
: A by-product of this "corn
: plastic" is gypsum, the same stuff
: they make dry-wall out of, except this
: stuff isn't good enough for that. It
: isn't really good enough for anything
: and they make huge piles of it! I saw
: an ad in the local paper the other day
: offering it for free to local farmers
: to land apply as fertilizer so I guess
: it's good for that but I don't think
: that takes much of it. So really, they
: can't even give it away and they end up
: landfilling it.
:
: I wonder, is it worth it? What does
: that gypsum do to the ground? Does it
: change the pH or anything? Or seep into
: groundwater? Or even if it doesn't, it
: does take up room. Are we really
: accomplishing anything?
:
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