Okay, one more thing

[zesty_pinto]

Just reading through this great Science article on the extraction of chitin/chitosan from crustaceans. If you've read the hype before, chitin is a natural material considered for a plastic substitute that is mainly looked at because it can degrade in weeks to months since it's so naturally occurring. There's some hard science on the processes they're investigating to make it easier to do.

I remember hearing about this and wondering why they never did anything with it, but this explains a lot about why. As you may tell, I'm very piqued about it.

Comments

[nimueth]

Oooh that's really interesting! :o

[zesty_pinto]

It reminds me of how back in the day the earth was covered with dead vegetation that never went away because nothing could take advantage of breaking down the materials for millenia. I think it resembles the fact that plastics will eventually break down into their base components, it just won't happen anytime in our lifetimes. Using this kind of plastic already has bacteria that would happily chomp down these polymers so just make a ton of sense. I think that we'll still use regular plastics too, but I hope it'll be for things that have a more long-term use or else people are going to be fumigating their ships for plastic-eating bacteria in the far flung future.

[padhopper]

But Shellfish allergy

You mean I now have to be cautious of bags?

[zesty_pinto]

That's a good point, but chitin/chitosan occurs naturally in other places too; the article mentions that it's normally occurring in plants, too and is basically just what helps give these things their structure. Seafood in general is just one of the few things where you have a high enough ratio of the stuff to potentially consider it viable.