MIT Creates Superhydrophobic Condiment Bottles 292
An anonymous reader writes "First we had a superhydrophobic spray that meant no dirt or sweat could stick to your clothes. Then a hydrophobic nanocoating was created for circuit boards to make them water resistant. Now MIT has gone a step further and solved one of the ongoing problems of using condiments: they've figured out how to make a food-safe superhydrophobic coating for food packaging. It means ketchup and mayonnaise will no longer be stuck to the insides of the bottle, and therefore there will no longer be any waste. What's amusing is this seems to be a happy accident. The MIT team was actually investigating slippery coatings to stop gas and oil lines clogging as well as how to stop a surface from having ice form on it. Now their lab is filled with condiments for continued testing of their food-safe version."
How durable? (Score:5, Interesting)
This stuff should probably be shipped in double walled tanker trucks.. hate to see what it does when spilt on a roadway.
This presumes the waste is undesirable... (Score:4, Interesting)
... but it's not, not to the people running the companies that sell the condiments and spec the packaging. They WANT people to waste the product, because that means the companies can sell more, and it's far cheaper for those companies to make more than it is for consumers to waste it. Guess who winds up profiting from the waste?
Another example: something so mundane as toothpaste. For decades there have been TV commercials and print ads depicting actors using completely obscene amounts of the stuff, literally an order of magnitude more than is required for an effective result. Colgate and other companies have been encouraging that waste for decades, and that stuff has consequences when it winds up in bodies of water. I also suspect there was a bit of sinister collaboration in the design of at least one electric toothbrush, again intended to manipulate people to use more toothpaste than required: one model originally had just the useful rotating circular head, but then later added a fixed-bristle region adjacent for - you guessed it - holding more toothpaste.
The final insult: at least one of those makers decided to tinker with the diameter of the toothpaste tube opening, which had been a de facto standard for decades. I have a backpacking/travel toothbrush that I bought in the Eighties, which included its own mini-tube that had to be refilled by screwing a tube of toothpaste into one end and squeezing; this was only made feasible because all tubes of toothpaste used exactly the same opening diameter and thread spacing. Fast forward to 2010 and my purchase of toothpaste made by Church-Dwight, and my subsequent angry discovery that they had increased the diameter of the tube opening such that it no longer fit my old travel toothbrush. Now why would they increase the diameter of the opening? It couldn't possibly have anything to do with promoting incidental waste and selling more tubes of product, could it?
I'm a perennial cynic and skeptic, but I doubt these superhydrophobic containers will ever be used for condiments. Not only would the more expensive packaging cut into profits, the reduced waste would make a dent in them, too.
Re:Maybe it's irrational... (Score:3, Interesting)
Should we start long-term medical studies of things before the things are invented?
But seriously, there are a lot of people investigating nanoparticle safety. Some of them across the hall from me. Time will tell whether your fear is well-founded or not.
Recyclability? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This presumes the waste is undesirable... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Recyclability? (Score:4, Interesting)
because there are several levels of refinement that has to happen to get sand to the point to make clear/colored glass of the quality people are accustomed to today. It is cheaper to take glass that is already at that purity level and remelt it than it is to refine raw sand and then have to do the same melt & mold process.
Re:I just flip the bottle upside down (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless, of course, this coating is something we don't want in our dumps . What happens when hydrophobic crap hits the water table? How does it affect the breakdown of garbage back into the environment? Does it solve the problem of plastic leeching estrogen-like chains into food or make it worse? What if it gets into food?
If it is safe however, I propose a protective coating for building foundations, basements and roofs. Include it in paint. Line gasoline tanks. Plenty of places in the world that water isn't welcome.