Is green gas and CO2 impacting climate change?

[jsmithski]

[AK47frizzle]

barely scratches the surface

[Adolf Hamster]

Compared to the crap that gets spewed out by shipping and all the coal fired powerstations we're gonna need to re-open so we can all drive teslas its a drop in the ocean.

[E21A]

I think the plastic we spray all over the countryside might be more of a problem 😂

[Uncle Pauly]

4 hours ago, E21A said:

I think the plastic we spray all over the countryside might be more of a problem 😂

 

This. Use of green gas will have F-all impact climate change. But spraying tons of plastic all over the countryside isn't such a great idea and will - ultimately - become regulated in the UK, in the same way it is in the Netherlands.

 

I must admit I use plastic BBs myself. I mostly run a GBBR and bio-BBs aren't well suited to it, but if they were I'd be happy to switch.

 

In fact this cropped up recently for a mate of mine who runs a paintball site in Hereford. He was approached by a local airsoft group wanting to use the land, but the landowner didn't want them on site due to use of plastic BBs (apparently the paintball ammo they use is biodegradable). So they tested a bunch of bio-BBs by leaving them out to compost for a month, and after that time they hadn't degraded at all... and the landowner decided to turn down the airsofters.

 

So I think there's some way to go before bio-BBs become a viable option for both players and landowners. But it will happen.

[Skara]

50 minutes ago, Uncle Pauly said:

So they tested a bunch of bio-BBs by leaving them out to compost for a month, and after that time they hadn't degraded at all

I have a plastic glass on my balcony with a bunch of Bioval 0.30s in it. Completely exposed to sun and rain.

 

The glass is almost done, the bbs are still intact.

 

I bought that bag of BBs 4 years ago.

[Samurai]

Bio BB is made of PLA. It is decomposed by the bacteria in the ground. In normal situations it takes over 100 years to decompose it. In recycling centers they keep it on 60C and feed bacteria to it, and it decomposes in 6 months.

In that bottle it will decompose in 1000+ years.

Still much better than non bio, which is ABS.

Also, PLA is made of corn or tapioca starch while ABS is made from oil.

[Rogerborg]

On 14/01/2020 at 12:42, Samurai said:

In normal situations it takes over 100 years to decompose it.

Still much better than non bio

 

Long term, yes, but I'm not sure many landowners will be best pleased to hear that it'll only be their great-great-*-grandchildren that see the difference on their site.

 

The intardtubes confirms that PLA will only biodegrade before the next ice age if you're actively composting it, which we are not.

 

Refs:

 

Research study commissioned by the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery and produced by California State University in Chico:

http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/publications/Documents/1435\20121435.pdf

Long story short: PLA doesn’t degrade under any measurable criteria in 365 days in a simulated marine environment, complete with sand, microbiota, 30 deg. C, etc.

 

For PLA degradation in landfill environments:

http://www.material.chula.ac.th/Journal/v18-2-2/83-87 RUDEEKIT.pdf

Not much degradation there either.

 

A generic biodegradable polymer review article that includes a short paragraph about PLA and acknowledges (somewhat by omission) that it is only biodegradable in industrial composting facilities (by and large missing in any major US city I’ve lived in):

http://homepages.rpi.edu/~grossr/_doc/publication/SCIENCE 2002 297 803.pdf

 

Another, highly cited one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769161/pdf/ijms-10-03722.pdf (skip to this one first if you are a science geek and want to have a bit of perspective on plastics; not all plastics are equally bad, and PLA is by far NOT the most biodegradable one.)

 

Scientific American thinks that a PLA bottle will biodegrade, yes, but it will take between one hundred to one thousand years, in a landfill environment:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/environmental-impact-of-corn-based-plastics/

 

And all that assumes that your "bio" BBs are actually made from PLA.  Bear in mind that Chinese baby formula manufacturers have repeatedly poisoned babies for profit, with the collusion of the local Party officials.  Do you think they care about mislabelling ABS BBs and marking them up?

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-milk/probe-finds-20-percent-of-china-milk-companies-in-scandal-idUSPEK27908420080916