Plastic string/rope: wrong or right?

[punkrockcaveman]

So I was watching youtube last night. I saw a guy promoting a gadget that turns plastic pop bottles into cord/lashing type stuff. He made quite a cool camp chair from it. My initial thought was 'oh that's great!' and it made me want to buy one. Then a few seconds later I thought why turn something recyclable into something single use? Surely it's more environmentally friendly to use a biodegradable natural cordage?

Another of this guy's videos show him extruding cordage from a single use plastic bag. Now this I think is a little more environmentally friendly, at least on the surface, as it's already a single use item. However I can't tell you the last time I saw or used a single use plastic bag! So in my mind it's only promoting people to go out and find a single use plastic bag when they should be thing of the past.

Thoughts?

 

[Paul_B]

How do they recycle plastic bottles? I always thought they shredded, melted and then turned them into pellets needed for making new plastic products. If so isn't he recycling to make useable cordage? The question is whether he can use such cordage again once it's no longer needed for the original cordage job, re-recycle it if you like.

It's amazing how long plastic cordage can last. I used to see one farmer's gate being held together by the same baler twine for a few years. I think farming couldn't survive without the baler twine bodge option. It's like duct tape, cable ties and toe ties for cyclists.

 

[TLM]

One can cut a PET bottle fairly easily into narrow continuous tie material. It takes sun quite well and is fairly strong. It would be a good material for sun chairs which are out all the time but for a camp chair I would prefer something softer.

It is nowadays not so clear which materials are environmentally friendly and which are not. Take the ubiquitous cotton for example.

 

[Robson Valley]

Single-use plastics are a thing of the future and back in vogue until the Covid myth dies off about solid surface transfers.
I re-use single use 500 ml water bottles more than 10X. You don't have to cope with a Boil Water Order.
You don't have to cope with an Emergency Water Conservation Order. I do. I need those bottles.
Half a dozen 1,500 ml wine bottles of boiled water is OK for just me but I have to keep working at it.

My groceries are delivered in the typical single use bags. No bag leaves my house
without having been used at least 2 if not 3 times.

A styrofoam coffee cup isn't very elegant but it has the smallest environmental footprint.
Got a favorite ceramic/clay coffee mug? When you add up every last damn thing that the coffee mug cost in the environment,
You must hand wash that mug more than 300X to match the styrofoam.

I hope that this is provocative. Not at all what I expected but here we are.

 

[TLM]

On the third hand a hand made clay tea mug is more positive than factory made. If well made it could last for quite a while.

 

[santaman2000]

How do they recycle plastic bottles? I always thought they shredded, melted and then turned them into pellets needed for making new plastic products. If so isn't he recycling to make useable cordage? The question is whether he can use such cordage again once it's no longer needed for the original cordage job, re-recycle it if you like.

It's amazing how long plastic cordage can last. I used to see one farmer's gate being held together by the same baler twine for a few years. I think farming couldn't survive without the baler twine bodge option. It's like duct tape, cable ties and toe ties for cyclists.

Plastics are usually shredded to recycle but not always melted. Probably rarely is a better description. The most common I see here is they’re shredded and added as the filer to a binder to make planking for outdoor decks or outdoor furniture.

 

[Robson Valley]

Melting plastic scrap is a tricky business. Has to be done in a sealed chamber to avoid fires.

The shells of lead-acid vehicle batteries can be smashed, washed and melted for extrusion as pellets.
The pellets are re-melted elsewhere to manufacture outdoor sheet goods (eg tool boxes).

The acid goes to a fertilizer plant, the lead is very pure and gets recycled for new battery lead.

When I got the tour, they were bringing in trainloads of used batteries with a capacity of 5,000 batteries per day.
I guess there's some economy of scale in that.

 

[TLM]

Some 15 years ago I designed and had built a large piston injection moulding machine, it was fed by a screw extruder that did the melting. It was fed any polyolefin scrap material and we made test pieces that had a weight of about 10 kg. They came out better than expected and fulfilled the specs. The company director (after the succesful tests) decided that it was not after all their "strategy". The machine was scrapped. So much for recycling, I am a sceptic after that as even a succesful trial did not convince the idiots.

The machine actually had a capacity to make parts upto 50 kg weight, that's fairly large.

 

[lou1661]

You must hand wash that mug more than 300X to match the styrofoam.

That's less than three months use from a mug, how many styrofoam cups would you have thrown away in that time? And as an aside, most of my mugs are 10+ years old. Much better than anything plastic.

Louis

 

[Stew]

A styrofoam coffee cup isn't very elegant but it has the smallest environmental footprint.

Do you have some sources for that? An interesting discussion point.

 

[Robson Valley]

I think the paper was called: "Different Kinds of Coffee Cups."
Came out of the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, back in about 1971.
Author and Journal have long since slipped my mind. Respectable rag, the results were a surprise to me.
Factored in everything from digging and transporting the clay to stocking a retail store shelf.

I think that I beat the odds.
In the last 50 years, I have had maybe 4-5 favorite coffee mugs. They get washed once a month,
whether they need it or not. "Dirty?" I don't drink dirt. It was coffee.

 

[Tengu]

A lot of my plastics gets re used as packaging.

Then someone else can chuck it out.

 

[TLM]

A few years ago the Japs found a bacterium (in some garbage dump) that breaks down PET, I think one that breaks down PA was found earlier. Sun breaks down polyolefins. They are not everywhere but that just shows that most plastics are not forever.

I bought my latest tea cup in Romania from an old Hungarian speaking gentleman who was apparently the last in the line of traditional makers in the village. The cups were made of pure kaolin, when asked where he got that he said there is a mountain full of it close to the village.

 

[punkrockcaveman]

A few years ago the Japs found a bacterium (in some garbage dump) that breaks down PET, I think one that breaks down PA was found earlier. Sun breaks down polyolefins. They are not everywhere but that just shows that most plastics are not forever.

I bought my latest tea cup in Romania from an old Hungarian speaking gentleman who was apparently the last in the line of traditional makers in the village. The cups were made of pure kaolin, when asked where he got that he said there is a mountain full of it close to the village.

Are they not broken down into more harmful substances though?

 

[TLM]

As far as I can remenber the results were fairly neutral small molecules.

 

[punkrockcaveman]

As far as I can remenber the results were fairly neutral small molecules.

Not what I was expecting/heard on the grapevine, but encouraging. Is it not a worry that the bacteria would create a mass of micro plastic pollution? I heard on the news that a river (I think it was the mersey. Could be wrong) had an alarming amount of microplastics in it

 

[TLM]

PET is a polymer, a macromolecule of repeating units tied together by the naming bond. Mostly the breaking happens at these bonding sites so in many cases the end result would be a small molecule, the break down might not be complete so microplastics might in some cases be the result. The starting chemicals of PET are not all that healthy but from the article I understood that the break down molecules are larger and not very active. It was some years ago that I read about it.

WP about it: PET breaking bacterium

 

[santaman2000]

Not what I was expecting/heard on the grapevine, but encouraging. Is it not a worry that the bacteria would create a mass of micro plastic pollution? I heard on the news that a river (I think it was the mersey. Could be wrong) had an alarming amount of microplastics in it

As far as I remember the micro plastic pollution isn’t from the breakdown processes TLM described but rather from plastic particles coming loose from synthetic clothing when washed and then getting into the sewage system. Eventually finding its way to the oceans and into the food chain.

 

[Robson Valley]

Different colored and patterned plastic "flagging tape" is used here for all sorts of marking needs.
We can buy the tapes with different times of "self-destruct." Oxygen in the air, UV in sunlight,
winter freezing conditions, those sorts of factors are used to break down the tapes.

The problem with the same technologies in domestic plastics is that the load is huge, it gets buried.
No oxygen, no sunlight and fermentables creating warmth.

 

[Fraxinus]

So I was watching youtube last night. I saw a guy promoting a gadget that turns plastic pop bottles into cord/lashing type stuff. He made quite a cool camp chair from it. My initial thought was 'oh that's great!' and it made me want to buy one. Then a few seconds later I thought why turn something recyclable into something single use? Surely it's more environmentally friendly to use a biodegradable natural cordage?
Thoughts?

I am all for re-using stuff or re-purposing but don't like buying kit to do the job that can be done easily. the Hamster has a video of how to do this here.
Nicely done video too.
Rob.