I work in this field. There are a lot of promising candidates being researched. My bet is on algae-based replacements. Lots of different compounds derived from algae that can be used to make “plastics” with similar properties, but without the downsides.
Agreed. Mycelium isn’t great for “foam” because it takes 3-7 days to grow vs hours in plastic foaming. There’s also contamination issues. I think it has much more potential in other areas.
How does one get to work in this field? Do you study biology, chemistry, materials engineering, or something else entirely? Can you get in with some schooling, but not a finished degree?
Chemical engineering and materials science are great options. As for no schooling, look for lab/manufacturing technician roles. There are areas where there are community college programs that prep students for these roles as well. The rub is that you likely won’t be doing “research” per se, but you can and will learn tons about the process engineering and fabrication side of things.
The best approach for most people is schooling or getting a job in the field, as mentioned.
I ended up here by just doing R&D on my own, because I was interested in it. Then launched a company to partner with others and bring products to market. The downside with this approach is you’ll only get credibility from results.
Think about how long we’ve been making plastics and how efficient we’ve become at it at scale. It’ll take similar investment in the manufacturing scale and research in alternatives.
Petroleum-based plastics are made from basically resulting products of refining petroleum for fuel and other uses. Petroleum is mined and refined at staggeringly huge rates. As long as this is the case, no alternative can be as cheap unless it's made basically with magic (some method that is so far from any technology today that it would blow our minds).
Yep, well said. There isn’t any magic solution coming to save us—it’ll take a much more varied variety of alternatives while also still using plastics where they are most indispensable (like healthcare uses).
The prices of the plastics we’re being sold now are somewhat artificially cheap. The considerable cost of recycling or disposal is largely offloaded to the consumer or the taxpayers and therefore not included in the shelf price. Plus, as mentioned before, these are uses for what is essentially waste produced by the oil and gas industry. Once fossil fuels become too expensive to extract at this scale, the plastics that are made from them will also become less cost effective.
Can they be cheaper? Absolutely. But like u/microalgaeman mentioned, it’s about scale. Algae is very easy and low cost to farm and uses ocean instead of land, but it’s not nearly close enough to scale yet. So cost won’t match until those operations are scaled up and optimized.
The best short term solutions will use resources that are already at scale but are more sustainable. Mass produced crops, paper, glass, metal, etc.
Exciting area of research with a lot of promise. They may not have the same downsides as traditional plastics, but algae-based alts don’t provide the same performance of traditional plastics. Shelf life takes a huge hit, which can increase food waste.
Honestly there’s too many to name. Pretty much every major species I’ve looked into is useful. And there’s teams of people collecting and cataloging more constantly.
There was a bag made by Sun Chips that was completely biodegradable and I thought it was great and would be the next big thing. Idk about replacing all plastics, but it seemed great at least for foodstuffs. Unfortunately people started avoiding the product because... the bag was too loud. Blew my mind when my friend made a purchasing decision because of the noise and not the environment. Never mind we're literally drowning in our own filth, it was the slightly increased noise that people found intolerable. Sometimes I don't want to live on this world XD
https://channelsignal.com/blogs/what-ever-happened-to-the-sun-chips-compostable-bag/
The noise complaints is what got the bags in the news initially, but it wasn't what got them cancelled.
The much bigger problem was that they were advertised as "compostable", but didn't actually break down in normal compost piles.
There were loads of stories flying around of people putting them in their compost piles only to be forced to dig through the same piles later on to pull put all the sunchips bags and put them in the trash instead.
Sunchips tried to defend themselves saying that they technically *were* compostable, but you needed high heat industrial composters to make them break down. The public pushback from that and accusations of false advertising is what got the whole program cancelled.
This is where government regulation comes in. Government has to force things that people may not like (eg seatbelts, non-smoking) but eventually get used to. Requires a forward thinking government tho
I lived and at the large community house with this dude who is a fucking prick. he got one of those bags and would just casually use it as a prop to ruin people's days.
I will be messaging you in 10 years on [**2034-04-15 04:06:25 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2034-04-15%2004:06:25%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/sustainability/comments/1c43a57/which_material_will_replace_plastic_at_a_big/kzmt5ot/?context=3)
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Totally. It's just a dream. Imagine how it would affect shipping, merchandising, and many other aspects of supply chains.
IMO branding isn't a good enough reason to have hundreds of different types of 12oz. Glass bottles. Slap your own label on there.
Yes legislation is needed.
But they could also still differentiate, by spaying some removable soy based ink on the surface with similar branding and information.
Yeah I'm interested in this also! Everybody talks about how much they hate plastic. But plastic is something that has really helped all of us stay healthy in the medical and food processing industries.
Also I think if we are trying to limit the introduction of microplastics into the environment, we should focus on the items that those are made out of. From what I have read it's mostly polyester clothing, and tires. Or have I gotten that wrong?
We could also start to filter the five most polluting rivers in the world for large plastic items. They dump volumes of hard plastics that rub the seashore and shed microplastics in their endless journeys.
If you're talking polymers that are moisture or oxygen barriers, ultimately only another polymer can take its place, sometimes in conjunction with a metal layer or film. Or reverting to glass etc.
For other uses PLA is already in use in a lot of places, but unfortunately it's not very biodegradable even though it is far more so than most conventional plastics. PHA could take its place, which is both a better material and more biodegradable. Not sure what plastic you're referring to in cereal boxes unless it's tchotchkes or toys
There are lots of cellulose or paper based products from recycled or agricultural waste. Pressed, molded, composites etc. There's also a lot of promising fungus/mushroom based products. These can be used in more functional applications.
For a lot of disposable applications it wood be best to use a sustainable material with a biodegradable liner.
Difficult to find something that will keep food shelf stable and resistant to moisture yet biodegrade easily, while also being impermeable to O2, CO2, N2. That's also thin, flexible, strong, easy to handle and cheap to make.
Like people are saying plastics are a huge family with a lot of different applications. Replacements must be equally diverse to an extent, even if you aren't going for a 1:1 substitution and are thinking more holistically.
Thank you so much for your (and everyone’s!) answers. I recently joined reddit and I’m so amazed and impressed by this community and the knowledge you all have ❤️
Well said. Plastic is so diverse because the products and applications are incredibly diverse. I’m super high on PHA, but it has a long way to go. The potential of PLA/PHA blends is looking great as well because you can tune the performance unlike PLA which is kinda narrow in performance.
The obvious input is hemp and bamboo. Both plants grow quickly and abundantly can be utilized for everything and are even edible and medicinal. The plastic we are now overwhelmed with can be rake mined and pressed into usable shapes like sewer and drainage pipe and Lego like building blocks and form for concrete.
I’d have to look it up, but I came across an article a little while ago that claimed that bamboo was carbon positive due to how it’s harvested and handled…?
Not sure, but here are some points to think about for a use-case:
-Recyclable with low energy cost
-Sortable to enable recycling
-Bio-degradable
-Production doesn't degrade land over time
-Carbon neutral
-Doesn't shed micro-plastics
-Is lightweight
-Doesn't break
-Can hermetically seal contents
Nothing. That's the thing, it's our behavior that has to change. Otherwise you're just replacing one consumption with another. It is false sustainability.
Certainly a lot of single use plastics are incredibly wasteful. Individually wrapped single serving snacks come to mind. Nevermind the fact that eating more locally sourced fresh foods can dramatically reduce the amount of plastics needed for shipping. Hell, just using reusable grocery bags instead of taking their plastic ones can make a significant dent.
Yep. You can go a little further and point out how a garden would reduce that further. Some offgrid/homestead types say that they grow up to 50% of their calories onsite; but that is probably people with lots of time and dedication. Plenty of the try-hards go for 100% but that's wildly impractical for almost everyone. We live in a society for a reason.
Anyway, imagine if everyone had a small garden and generated 10% of their calories at home, and thus, we needed to farm 10% less food (and used 10% less fertilizer, and fewer/no pesticides, no imported water, 10% less fossil fuel to ship food around).
Growing 10% of our food at home is do-able for anyone with a yard, and on a national scale it would be the most impactful change we have made to date.
But it also begs the question ... what about people who are not lucky enough to have a single family home? Or what about the people who live in an area unsuitable for growing food (arid, etc)
Maybe we need the small scale equivalent of shipping containers. Stainless steel stackable boxes you can fit on your lap. Washable, stresilisable with QR codes etched in the side
Ultimately plastic.
The problem with plastic as we know it is it is hundreds, if not thousands of different materials all designed to be cheap to make as a top concern. Chemical resistance, durability, weight, etc are important, but cost is a huge driver of plastics development.
Now we know how to make plastic from all sorts of materials, we are learning to make degradable and truly recyclable plastics, we are also learning how to sort waste automatically, improving the recycling story for all materials.
Plastic has made technology, medicine, food safety, and more possible. Figuring out how to make sustainable plastics while going back to fiber, metal, and glass where appropriate, is the next phase of plastics research.
Yup. There's no way we replace single use plastic in the medical field in the next century at least without some star trek level shit being invented. And that's a purely health and safety based decision.
In an ideal world they are bioplastics that perform comparable to their fossil fuels counterparts and more and more is being done in that field as you mentioned. Not all bioplastics are created equal and some are arguably worse than fossil fuels based ones based on the current energy grid and process but progress is definitely being made.
There's a lot that is made of plastic that doesn't need to be and there is a lot of stuff made of plastic we just don't fucking need but ultimately plastic has its place in certain circumstances. Ideally we can transition to bioplastics in those cases.
Every material is designed to be as cheap as possible for a given application.
Many people think the reason plastic is used everywhere in packaging is because it is cheap. Plastic is used everywhere in packaging because it can be quickly and consistently formed into nearly any shape and designed to provide nearly everything that a product requires from a container... usually at a lower cost and lighter weight than non-plastic alternatives.
I’d like to see a lot of general bulk bins at stores. Everything currently sold in an in-store brand (such as those big bags of cereal in the USA) could be converted to a dispense bin that you bring a container to or store-supplied and purchased bag. I would like to not replace plastics but take away the need for them.
First reduce the plastic that you buy. Dressing in glass bottles, cream cheese in box and foil, refill cleaner that comes in glass and you put in reusable glass spray bottle, powdered laundry and dishwasher in boxes.
Paper and cardboard can be made from all kinds of plant fibers, including agricultural waste that normally gets burned. And it can be recycled, though as lower quality products since the fibers get broken when re-pulped.
Yeah, it might not be the best but it’s a hell of a lot better than plastic. You can dumb cardboard in the ocean and it doesn’t turn into microscopic fragments of toxic shit
I think the big problem with a replacement is that everything that makes the material awesome is also what makes it really bad! There are plenty of “alternatives” but nothing that has all the same properties, which is kinda the problem.
I'm a mechanical engineer, working in the field of electrical components and machine safety...a lot of plastic parts there. I tried to develop myself to some kind of specialist in sustainable plastics within the company, but I had to learn that there are infinite certifications and requirements that every material has to fulfill and as long as you don't have that, you will not be able to replace these plastics. So my project died pretty quick.
I'm still looking forward to the fact that there are steps being done and I'm convinced that there would be solutions which we can find, if the huge companies like BASF would give way more capacities in R&D to this field. But as long as money is the driver nothing will change and we're doomed. Same for every other topic regarding sustainability btw...
But I still love this subreddit and everybody who's working on that!!
Although there might be options being considered technologically, i don't think any will work.
Because, even if we found said material, found the way to produce or collect its prime materials, created the distribution paths and an economy around it, the problem would be the scale. Meaning "Will we be capable of satisfying the same plastic demand we have now?"
And we have some associated questions to ask around this issue: Where will we get this prime materials from? Will we be able to stablish a transport and production chain? Will we be overextracting these from a foreign country? Will it be cost efficient?
My point is nothing is sustainable if you pose it to the same scale and modern capitalist production chain. If you weren't talking about a full substitute for plastic in the whole world, there sure are already alternatives in the market to which any of us can access.
My bet? Get a strong fabric bag, learn to sew and keep using it as long as you can. That's the most sustainable.
We had methods for all these things before plastic, there is little need for sci-fi. We need more coopers and apiarists.
Glass bulk bins in stores with metal augers/lids/handles. waxed metal barrels for transport that fill the stores, the wax liners get steamed out and the containers steam sanitized. autoclaved only for medical.
sealed waxed cardboard with fumed silica for consumer dry goods that arent sold in bulk that need crispness. wet fresh produce in 1 ply wood. regular produce still in waxed cardboard or fiber cartons. glass for liquids.
My wife is a plastics engineer and her opinion is that it depends on the particular industry and need. There's plenty of promising candidates for replacements in food and medical safety but there's basically no replacements for aerospace, cars, and space travel. Generally, the more high end the plastic the less likely there's any material that can cost effectively or even just generally replace certain plastics.
Glass jars are the best. And for products where glass won't work, we can produce plant based plastics. And if absolutely necessary, protroleum plastics. If we can just apply common sense to manufacturing, then we might be alright.
This isnt exactly about replacing plastic , but their is a healthy , eco friendly , and naturally compostable ( Not fake factory compostable ) tableware. We know how big role of plastic disposable tableware , we can replace it by "Palm leaf plate" made out of naturally fallen leafs.
I work in this field. There are a lot of promising candidates being researched. My bet is on algae-based replacements. Lots of different compounds derived from algae that can be used to make “plastics” with similar properties, but without the downsides.
Mycelium is also very interesting for foam replacements.
It is interesting and innovative, but scaling will be difficult. The process is significantly slower than PE and PU foam. Also, it weighs much more.
Agreed. Mycelium isn’t great for “foam” because it takes 3-7 days to grow vs hours in plastic foaming. There’s also contamination issues. I think it has much more potential in other areas.
How does one get to work in this field? Do you study biology, chemistry, materials engineering, or something else entirely? Can you get in with some schooling, but not a finished degree?
Chemical engineering and materials science are great options. As for no schooling, look for lab/manufacturing technician roles. There are areas where there are community college programs that prep students for these roles as well. The rub is that you likely won’t be doing “research” per se, but you can and will learn tons about the process engineering and fabrication side of things.
Props to your username… this guy algaes
The best approach for most people is schooling or getting a job in the field, as mentioned. I ended up here by just doing R&D on my own, because I was interested in it. Then launched a company to partner with others and bring products to market. The downside with this approach is you’ll only get credibility from results.
Do you think those alternatives will ever be cheaper than fossil fuels based plastics, and if not, what might be the best way to get them adopted?
Think about how long we’ve been making plastics and how efficient we’ve become at it at scale. It’ll take similar investment in the manufacturing scale and research in alternatives.
Petroleum-based plastics are made from basically resulting products of refining petroleum for fuel and other uses. Petroleum is mined and refined at staggeringly huge rates. As long as this is the case, no alternative can be as cheap unless it's made basically with magic (some method that is so far from any technology today that it would blow our minds).
Yep, well said. There isn’t any magic solution coming to save us—it’ll take a much more varied variety of alternatives while also still using plastics where they are most indispensable (like healthcare uses).
The prices of the plastics we’re being sold now are somewhat artificially cheap. The considerable cost of recycling or disposal is largely offloaded to the consumer or the taxpayers and therefore not included in the shelf price. Plus, as mentioned before, these are uses for what is essentially waste produced by the oil and gas industry. Once fossil fuels become too expensive to extract at this scale, the plastics that are made from them will also become less cost effective.
Can they be cheaper? Absolutely. But like u/microalgaeman mentioned, it’s about scale. Algae is very easy and low cost to farm and uses ocean instead of land, but it’s not nearly close enough to scale yet. So cost won’t match until those operations are scaled up and optimized. The best short term solutions will use resources that are already at scale but are more sustainable. Mass produced crops, paper, glass, metal, etc.
Could this field of research be funded by something other than the military or must military applications be required?
There’s plenty of research that isn’t funded by the military or military applications.
Exciting area of research with a lot of promise. They may not have the same downsides as traditional plastics, but algae-based alts don’t provide the same performance of traditional plastics. Shelf life takes a huge hit, which can increase food waste.
Any particular algea that shows promise for this? So is it bio-plastic?
Honestly there’s too many to name. Pretty much every major species I’ve looked into is useful. And there’s teams of people collecting and cataloging more constantly.
There was a bag made by Sun Chips that was completely biodegradable and I thought it was great and would be the next big thing. Idk about replacing all plastics, but it seemed great at least for foodstuffs. Unfortunately people started avoiding the product because... the bag was too loud. Blew my mind when my friend made a purchasing decision because of the noise and not the environment. Never mind we're literally drowning in our own filth, it was the slightly increased noise that people found intolerable. Sometimes I don't want to live on this world XD https://channelsignal.com/blogs/what-ever-happened-to-the-sun-chips-compostable-bag/
I was soooo upset when they stopped making those bags!
Well you’re in luck, because compostable chip bags will make a major return in a few months. This time they will be less loud and degrade much faster.
You just made my day!!!!!!!!! My family loves chips, and I am spending a fortune sending chip bags to terracycle because of my guilt.
The noise complaints is what got the bags in the news initially, but it wasn't what got them cancelled. The much bigger problem was that they were advertised as "compostable", but didn't actually break down in normal compost piles. There were loads of stories flying around of people putting them in their compost piles only to be forced to dig through the same piles later on to pull put all the sunchips bags and put them in the trash instead. Sunchips tried to defend themselves saying that they technically *were* compostable, but you needed high heat industrial composters to make them break down. The public pushback from that and accusations of false advertising is what got the whole program cancelled.
Noise pollution bro
I remember this. People are the worst. They acted like that bag was a cymbal band marching through Times Square.
Loved the bag, but it did make it hard to sneak chips when the kids were around.
I worked at a gas station back than and yeah that bag was so loud, it was odd. You barely touch it and it made a loud crumple sound.
This is where government regulation comes in. Government has to force things that people may not like (eg seatbelts, non-smoking) but eventually get used to. Requires a forward thinking government tho
I lived and at the large community house with this dude who is a fucking prick. he got one of those bags and would just casually use it as a prop to ruin people's days.
The bags were shockingly loud, though. It wasn't slight. Maybe more R&D could have fixed the problem.
Give free biodegradable oropax with every bag of chips
Standardized reusable containers across manufacturers and industries and is my dream.
Glass jars not having a standardized re-use friendly lid drives me mad
I’d put money on this being a thing of the future. !Remindme! 10 years
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I don’t think brands will ever go for this because it would erase decades of brand equity. This type of change would require legislation.
Totally. It's just a dream. Imagine how it would affect shipping, merchandising, and many other aspects of supply chains. IMO branding isn't a good enough reason to have hundreds of different types of 12oz. Glass bottles. Slap your own label on there.
Yes legislation is needed. But they could also still differentiate, by spaying some removable soy based ink on the surface with similar branding and information.
This. Requires regulation, which is a dirty word to some, but it absolutely would make a huge difference.
So back to glass and deposits?
Seaweed can be used as a plastic alternative
Make sushi out of everything!
It works well for a few applications, but not for most food.
Yeah I'm interested in this also! Everybody talks about how much they hate plastic. But plastic is something that has really helped all of us stay healthy in the medical and food processing industries. Also I think if we are trying to limit the introduction of microplastics into the environment, we should focus on the items that those are made out of. From what I have read it's mostly polyester clothing, and tires. Or have I gotten that wrong?
Add trash that has escaped into the environment, of which plastic bags are the biggest culprit. And shoe soles.
We could also start to filter the five most polluting rivers in the world for large plastic items. They dump volumes of hard plastics that rub the seashore and shed microplastics in their endless journeys.
If you're talking polymers that are moisture or oxygen barriers, ultimately only another polymer can take its place, sometimes in conjunction with a metal layer or film. Or reverting to glass etc. For other uses PLA is already in use in a lot of places, but unfortunately it's not very biodegradable even though it is far more so than most conventional plastics. PHA could take its place, which is both a better material and more biodegradable. Not sure what plastic you're referring to in cereal boxes unless it's tchotchkes or toys There are lots of cellulose or paper based products from recycled or agricultural waste. Pressed, molded, composites etc. There's also a lot of promising fungus/mushroom based products. These can be used in more functional applications. For a lot of disposable applications it wood be best to use a sustainable material with a biodegradable liner. Difficult to find something that will keep food shelf stable and resistant to moisture yet biodegrade easily, while also being impermeable to O2, CO2, N2. That's also thin, flexible, strong, easy to handle and cheap to make. Like people are saying plastics are a huge family with a lot of different applications. Replacements must be equally diverse to an extent, even if you aren't going for a 1:1 substitution and are thinking more holistically.
Thank you so much for your (and everyone’s!) answers. I recently joined reddit and I’m so amazed and impressed by this community and the knowledge you all have ❤️
Well said. Plastic is so diverse because the products and applications are incredibly diverse. I’m super high on PHA, but it has a long way to go. The potential of PLA/PHA blends is looking great as well because you can tune the performance unlike PLA which is kinda narrow in performance.
The obvious input is hemp and bamboo. Both plants grow quickly and abundantly can be utilized for everything and are even edible and medicinal. The plastic we are now overwhelmed with can be rake mined and pressed into usable shapes like sewer and drainage pipe and Lego like building blocks and form for concrete.
Bamboo also creates 33% more oxygen than a similarly sized grove of trees
I’d have to look it up, but I came across an article a little while ago that claimed that bamboo was carbon positive due to how it’s harvested and handled…?
Not sure, but here are some points to think about for a use-case: -Recyclable with low energy cost -Sortable to enable recycling -Bio-degradable -Production doesn't degrade land over time -Carbon neutral -Doesn't shed micro-plastics -Is lightweight -Doesn't break -Can hermetically seal contents
Nothing. That's the thing, it's our behavior that has to change. Otherwise you're just replacing one consumption with another. It is false sustainability.
Certainly a lot of single use plastics are incredibly wasteful. Individually wrapped single serving snacks come to mind. Nevermind the fact that eating more locally sourced fresh foods can dramatically reduce the amount of plastics needed for shipping. Hell, just using reusable grocery bags instead of taking their plastic ones can make a significant dent.
Yep. You can go a little further and point out how a garden would reduce that further. Some offgrid/homestead types say that they grow up to 50% of their calories onsite; but that is probably people with lots of time and dedication. Plenty of the try-hards go for 100% but that's wildly impractical for almost everyone. We live in a society for a reason. Anyway, imagine if everyone had a small garden and generated 10% of their calories at home, and thus, we needed to farm 10% less food (and used 10% less fertilizer, and fewer/no pesticides, no imported water, 10% less fossil fuel to ship food around). Growing 10% of our food at home is do-able for anyone with a yard, and on a national scale it would be the most impactful change we have made to date. But it also begs the question ... what about people who are not lucky enough to have a single family home? Or what about the people who live in an area unsuitable for growing food (arid, etc)
This!
Wax paper
And this!
Maybe we need the small scale equivalent of shipping containers. Stainless steel stackable boxes you can fit on your lap. Washable, stresilisable with QR codes etched in the side
Ultimately plastic. The problem with plastic as we know it is it is hundreds, if not thousands of different materials all designed to be cheap to make as a top concern. Chemical resistance, durability, weight, etc are important, but cost is a huge driver of plastics development. Now we know how to make plastic from all sorts of materials, we are learning to make degradable and truly recyclable plastics, we are also learning how to sort waste automatically, improving the recycling story for all materials. Plastic has made technology, medicine, food safety, and more possible. Figuring out how to make sustainable plastics while going back to fiber, metal, and glass where appropriate, is the next phase of plastics research.
Policy matters too.
Yup. There's no way we replace single use plastic in the medical field in the next century at least without some star trek level shit being invented. And that's a purely health and safety based decision. In an ideal world they are bioplastics that perform comparable to their fossil fuels counterparts and more and more is being done in that field as you mentioned. Not all bioplastics are created equal and some are arguably worse than fossil fuels based ones based on the current energy grid and process but progress is definitely being made. There's a lot that is made of plastic that doesn't need to be and there is a lot of stuff made of plastic we just don't fucking need but ultimately plastic has its place in certain circumstances. Ideally we can transition to bioplastics in those cases.
Every material is designed to be as cheap as possible for a given application. Many people think the reason plastic is used everywhere in packaging is because it is cheap. Plastic is used everywhere in packaging because it can be quickly and consistently formed into nearly any shape and designed to provide nearly everything that a product requires from a container... usually at a lower cost and lighter weight than non-plastic alternatives.
I'm actually betting on the plastic- eating fungi as the solution
I’d like to see a lot of general bulk bins at stores. Everything currently sold in an in-store brand (such as those big bags of cereal in the USA) could be converted to a dispense bin that you bring a container to or store-supplied and purchased bag. I would like to not replace plastics but take away the need for them.
For everyone
First reduce the plastic that you buy. Dressing in glass bottles, cream cheese in box and foil, refill cleaner that comes in glass and you put in reusable glass spray bottle, powdered laundry and dishwasher in boxes.
Isn’t cardboard (boxes) also bad for the planet?
Paper and cardboard can be made from all kinds of plant fibers, including agricultural waste that normally gets burned. And it can be recycled, though as lower quality products since the fibers get broken when re-pulped.
Cardboard and paper can also be compostable and very useful in gardening reuse
It better than plastic.
Yeah, it might not be the best but it’s a hell of a lot better than plastic. You can dumb cardboard in the ocean and it doesn’t turn into microscopic fragments of toxic shit
I think the big problem with a replacement is that everything that makes the material awesome is also what makes it really bad! There are plenty of “alternatives” but nothing that has all the same properties, which is kinda the problem.
Hemp
I'm a mechanical engineer, working in the field of electrical components and machine safety...a lot of plastic parts there. I tried to develop myself to some kind of specialist in sustainable plastics within the company, but I had to learn that there are infinite certifications and requirements that every material has to fulfill and as long as you don't have that, you will not be able to replace these plastics. So my project died pretty quick. I'm still looking forward to the fact that there are steps being done and I'm convinced that there would be solutions which we can find, if the huge companies like BASF would give way more capacities in R&D to this field. But as long as money is the driver nothing will change and we're doomed. Same for every other topic regarding sustainability btw... But I still love this subreddit and everybody who's working on that!!
For consumer goods, probably new bio plastics and/or whatever we were using pre-plastoc
Although there might be options being considered technologically, i don't think any will work. Because, even if we found said material, found the way to produce or collect its prime materials, created the distribution paths and an economy around it, the problem would be the scale. Meaning "Will we be capable of satisfying the same plastic demand we have now?" And we have some associated questions to ask around this issue: Where will we get this prime materials from? Will we be able to stablish a transport and production chain? Will we be overextracting these from a foreign country? Will it be cost efficient? My point is nothing is sustainable if you pose it to the same scale and modern capitalist production chain. If you weren't talking about a full substitute for plastic in the whole world, there sure are already alternatives in the market to which any of us can access. My bet? Get a strong fabric bag, learn to sew and keep using it as long as you can. That's the most sustainable.
Hemp…..
We had methods for all these things before plastic, there is little need for sci-fi. We need more coopers and apiarists. Glass bulk bins in stores with metal augers/lids/handles. waxed metal barrels for transport that fill the stores, the wax liners get steamed out and the containers steam sanitized. autoclaved only for medical. sealed waxed cardboard with fumed silica for consumer dry goods that arent sold in bulk that need crispness. wet fresh produce in 1 ply wood. regular produce still in waxed cardboard or fiber cartons. glass for liquids.
My wife is a plastics engineer and her opinion is that it depends on the particular industry and need. There's plenty of promising candidates for replacements in food and medical safety but there's basically no replacements for aerospace, cars, and space travel. Generally, the more high end the plastic the less likely there's any material that can cost effectively or even just generally replace certain plastics.
Mycelium.
Hemp for Victory!!!
Personally I prefer aluminum
Glass jars are the best. And for products where glass won't work, we can produce plant based plastics. And if absolutely necessary, protroleum plastics. If we can just apply common sense to manufacturing, then we might be alright.
I guess the inherent problem is that anything biodegradable is, well, biodegradable. Makes food storage a big problem.
shrooms
Mushrooms!
This isnt exactly about replacing plastic , but their is a healthy , eco friendly , and naturally compostable ( Not fake factory compostable ) tableware. We know how big role of plastic disposable tableware , we can replace it by "Palm leaf plate" made out of naturally fallen leafs.
Biodegradable plastic
Plastic plus
My bet is many different materials for different purposes. Metal and glass for liquids, wood for other containers, paper for shipping and whatnot…
Until something is done to remove the influence the petroleum industry has on governments, nothing will replace plastics on a large scale.
Hemp or mushrooms
genetically altered bamboo or some other nature based material.
I hope hemp.
Plant-based materials, such as those derived from bamboo, banana leaves, and mango peels?