173
Starch-based bioplastic may be as toxic as petroleum-based plastic, study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
173 points (93.9% liked)
News
36018 readers
1992 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It does mean no petroleum was used to make the plastic, which is one environmentally-friendly aspect.
That's incorrect, making things from crops that use farms which could be wildlife habitat and use oil based fertilizers and pesticides isn't necessarily better or emit less net co2. It may in some cases be better but just like corn based ethanol it can also increase food shortages and depending on where it's grown be worse than just using oil.
oil from the ground is a limited resource, farmland is relatively plentiful (more importantly governments want enough to feed more than their own people domestically even if the people won't ever want that much corn in their diet).
That's also incorrect. Oil is effectively unlimited, in the sense that we will stop using it on a large scale within the next 2-3 decades and after that demand will be lower than supply, the same situation we have with coal now.
And farmland is not plentiful at all, even though most of the world is covered in farmland it is always in short supply. That's why Brazil farmers cut down and burn rainforest for farmland to feed cattle, or cut down orangutan habitat to grow palm oil. There is a 1:1 relationship between farmland and habitat for animals.
In what fantasy world do we stop using it large scale for any reason other than supply dries up? Freight ships run on oil, planes run on oil, both do not have economically viable alternatives yet. Cars run on oil and it will take more than 2-3 decades until 95%+ of global cars are EVs. Plastic currently uses around 10% of global oil supply, so even if everything else drops to 0 we still need a lot.
Demand will decrease at a gradual and then rapid pace while there will be plenty of production even with decreased levels of oil exploration. I didn't say none, only that supply will exceed demand.
It barely makes it that far.