The Natural Materials That Could Replace Environmentally Harmful Plastics (bbc.com) 65
"The BBC has an article detailing new efforts to replace plastics used in products and construction with newer, less environmentally harmful alternative materials," writes Slashdot reader dryriver. The new products mentioned in the report include: Stone Wool: To transform one of the world's most abundant resources into something with utility and sustainability takes a special kind of alchemy. Stone wool comes from natural igneous rock -- the kind that forms after lava cools -- and a steelmaking byproduct called slag; these substances are melted together and spun into fibers, a little like candyfloss.
Mycotecture: Mushrooms aren't just a flavor-packed addition to ravioli or ragu (or a sparkplug to the occasional psychedelic adventure); soon, tree-hugging fungi and forest-floor toadstools may replace materials like polystyrene, protective packaging, insulation, acoustic insulation, furniture, aquatic materials and even leather goods.
Urine Bricks: Cement, concrete's primary ingredient, accounts for about 5% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers and engineers are working to develop less energy-intensive alternatives, including bricks made with leftover brewery grains, concrete modeled after ancient Roman breakwaters (Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock to form mortar, a highly stable material), and bricks made of, well, urine. As part of his thesis project, Edinburgh College of Art student Peter Trimble was working on an exhibit that was supposed to feature a module on sustainability. Almost by accident, he created "Biostone": a mixture of sand (incidentally, one of Earth's most abundant resources), nutrients, and urea -- a chemical found in human urine.
A greener particleboard: Despite what it sounds like, particleboard -- those rigid panels made of compressed and veneered wood chips and resin used in furniture and kitchen cabinetry throughout the world -- hasn't actually a place in the green-building pantheon. That's because the glue that binds particleboard's wood fibers traditionally contain formaldehyde, a colorless, flammable, strong-smelling chemical and known respiratory irritant and carcinogen. That means your faux-wood Ikea shelf is quietly "off-gassing" toxins into the air. One company, NU Green, created a material made from 100% pre-consumer recycled or recovered wood fibre called "Uniboard." Uniboard saves trees and avoids landfill, while also generating far fewer greenhouse gases than traditional particleboard, and contains no toxins. That's because Uniboard has pioneered the use of renewable fibers like corn stalks and hops, as well as no added formaldehyde (NAF) resin instead of glue.
Mycotecture: Mushrooms aren't just a flavor-packed addition to ravioli or ragu (or a sparkplug to the occasional psychedelic adventure); soon, tree-hugging fungi and forest-floor toadstools may replace materials like polystyrene, protective packaging, insulation, acoustic insulation, furniture, aquatic materials and even leather goods.
Urine Bricks: Cement, concrete's primary ingredient, accounts for about 5% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers and engineers are working to develop less energy-intensive alternatives, including bricks made with leftover brewery grains, concrete modeled after ancient Roman breakwaters (Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock to form mortar, a highly stable material), and bricks made of, well, urine. As part of his thesis project, Edinburgh College of Art student Peter Trimble was working on an exhibit that was supposed to feature a module on sustainability. Almost by accident, he created "Biostone": a mixture of sand (incidentally, one of Earth's most abundant resources), nutrients, and urea -- a chemical found in human urine.
A greener particleboard: Despite what it sounds like, particleboard -- those rigid panels made of compressed and veneered wood chips and resin used in furniture and kitchen cabinetry throughout the world -- hasn't actually a place in the green-building pantheon. That's because the glue that binds particleboard's wood fibers traditionally contain formaldehyde, a colorless, flammable, strong-smelling chemical and known respiratory irritant and carcinogen. That means your faux-wood Ikea shelf is quietly "off-gassing" toxins into the air. One company, NU Green, created a material made from 100% pre-consumer recycled or recovered wood fibre called "Uniboard." Uniboard saves trees and avoids landfill, while also generating far fewer greenhouse gases than traditional particleboard, and contains no toxins. That's because Uniboard has pioneered the use of renewable fibers like corn stalks and hops, as well as no added formaldehyde (NAF) resin instead of glue.
Urine Bricks? (Score:1)
Are they trying to find the stupidest things to put on here? Half of the list also isn't for plastic.
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Wouldn't matter if it was a good ideal or a bad one. Once a normal person reads something like "urine bricks" in some thing like this, then its over. Once they get this far and read something as stupid as this then they usually stop reading and completely disregard the whole ideal.
not replacing plastic and... (Score:2)
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No, the chemical process of turning limestone, etc. into portland cement is creates more CO2 than burning fossil fuels for the heating. Although I don't know how the old-type Roman cement compares to that.
if it's using lime... (Score:2)
Lime is very chemically active and, in the presence of CO2 (e.g. from the air), readily yielding calcium carbonate---even at room temperature.
Just another lame item in the article. Replace the lime and the energy demand and then someone would really have something worthwhile to write about.
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Would you feel better if it were called "carbamide"?
Urea, CO(NH2)2, is a simple organic molecule which, aside from carrying away waste nitrogen from protein metabolism in the human body, has a vast array of industrial applications. Nobody calls marine plywood "urine plywood".
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Yes I would. It would show more respect to the science involved in my opinion to have a name that was less disturbing, at least to me. Is calling it a urine brick proper then, or do you think it was chosen for purpose? I do not know the science behind it, just my interpretation of it.
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Unfortunately most plastic isn't easily recyclable, or in the case of thermoset plastics impossible to recycle (doesn't melt). Even those that do get recycled still get made using 80% virgin (raw) resin as the recycled plastic will degrade after multiple heat cycles (cross-link, or burn).
There are biodegradable plastics. They, unfortunately though, degrade. They can't be stored as easily, need to be kept out of the light and needs to have tighter shelf life controls. They are usually very hygroscopic as
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Thermodynamics.
You're trying to freeze a cup of coffee with an ice cube, or make a pig from sausage or make oil from plastic.
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oil from plastic? I mean shove the stuff back in the hole and cover it with dirt, no thermodynamics involved.
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Is your solution similar to the nuclear waste one?
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maybe, not sure what that one is. It is just like this: You take a bunch of oil out of the ground. The ground now has a hole where the oil was. Put plastic in that hole.
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not sure what that one is
You find a hole in the ground, put nuclear waste in it.
The idea has gained a lot of resistance and the lessons there apply to your proposal.
The waste can get into water tables via leeching, earthquakes, tectonic movement. Neither waste product is biodegradable, so storage time is essentially in perpetuity.
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so getting plastic into the water tables is worse than getting crude oil into them?
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False equivalency much?
Oil is sitting where it is because it works. Water is sitting where it is because it works.
We don't inject oil into ground storage where oil has never been before, right?
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False equivalency? You were concerned about the nuclear waste getting into the water. If you put the plastic into the space that the oil in then the oil would be getting into the water instead of the plastic, right? As for why we don't pump the oil back in, we take oil out to make it more accessible and to process it. injecting oil back into the ground doesn't make sense because you would have to pull it out to use it. Old plastic that can't easily be reused wouldn't need to be pulled out again. Just
They could... if they were affordable (Score:2)
The primary problem in building materials is cost. I can buy "natural fiber" insulation for 3x the price of the pink stuff. The $2000 difference is significant. The other issue is that these mostly shift the "bad stuff" somewhere else - whether it has to be replaced sooner or your production and transportation process is dirtier and more energy demanding.
Not the best way to help the environment anyway (Score:2)
Which is the best place to try to help the environment. The production of:
A) Stuff that is used briefly and then the average family throws away thousands of pounds of it, such as packaging.
B) Stuff that is made one time and used for 50 years.
The average person uses far more consumer packaging and other consumer goods in their lifetime than building materials. On balance, it the production of the building materials for my house just don't make any significant difference. I bought the walls once, I buy bevera
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The average house weighs 70 tons. How many years worth of styrofoam peanuts and blister packs is that?
Pine wood (Score:2)
The average house is also made of pine. What's the environmental impact of growing 100 pound pine tree vs 100 pounds of styrofoam?
Of course the concrete foundation is a large percentage of the weight, and as I mentioned concrete is the one building material that really does matter.
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The average house is made of Douglas fir, and set on footings or maybe a curtain wall, so there's no slab, just a few blobs of concrete which can be pathetically small and still meet code. It's still worth addressing but I'll bet the timber production gives the co2 a run for its money.
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About 1T/year/person which is well over 3x as much as 50 years ago. A house stands for 50-150 years so about 2-6 houses worth of trash is produced.
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The average person uses far more consumer packaging and other consumer goods in their lifetime than building materials.
I doubt this is true. About 7.5 billion cubic meters of concrete, weighing 18 billion tonnes, are used annually. That is about 2.5 tonnes for every human on the planet. That is 7 kg, or 15 pounds, per person per day.
The world also produces 1.8 billion tonnes of steel annually.
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The primary problem in building materials is cost. I can buy "natural fiber" insulation for 3x the price of the pink stuff. The $2000 difference is significant. The other issue is that these mostly shift the "bad stuff" somewhere else - whether it has to be replaced sooner or your production and transportation process is dirtier and more energy demanding.
Is the stone wool going to be tested with a radiation counter? Will it be free of any carcinogenic minerals? Hard to imagine that it will be so much more environmentally sound than plain old fiberglas insulation either.
I'm going to go outside now and piss out a few bricks..
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Hard to imagine that it will be so much more environmentally sound than plain old fiberglas insulation either.
Stone wool is much older than fiberglass insulation.
Pretty much the only downside with it is the price, but it provides better insulation than fiberglass so if you install the insulation yourself you should probably pick stone wool.
Since insulation translates to energy cost pretty quickly the extra cost for it is something you will get back.
If you build a house that you are going to sell and the buyer doesn't care about the insulation you go for fiberglass.
Of the four points in the summary I would say that
Asbestos (Score:2)
Isn't asbestos a kind of "stone wool"? They should at least test this stuff for biological safety.
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Isn't asbestos a kind of "stone wool"? They should at least test this stuff for biological safety.
That is a concern. Silica sand at least can be selected for consistent content. And fiberglass is pretty inert. Just don't go crushing and breathing it.
There has been radioactive minerals and radon production found in granite countertops as well. I'd be a lot more concerned about things like asbestos, maybe orpiment. Anyhow, there is a lot of reason to not trust something simply called "stone wool"
Looking up the composition of stone wool, it apparently tends to have a lot of glass as a component. That
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Some islands have problems with sand pirates [wikipedia.org] sneaking in at night with dredging machines and stealing their sand.
On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, sand harvesting is a political issue. Commercial dredgers collect the sand and sell it to beach owners on the newer islands, especially Maui and the Big Island.
Good quality sand is a limited resource.
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Came here to say this.
https://globalnews.ca/news/427... [globalnews.ca]
The lime the romans used (Score:2)
Was made more or less the same way we make the lime in cement today... They heated sea shells (calcium carbonate). We heat lime stone (calcium carbonate). Both processes release CO2 (the carbonate). They mixed their cement, in some cases, with a very particular type of volcanic material to make a very strong form of cement that sets under water and continues to harden. We have something similar today, now that the chemistry of that volcanic material is understood.
Cement, combined with "aggregate" (ston
These are all workable replacements (Score:4, Insightful)
Myco packaging is a very good replacement for styrofoam, in that it can be grown and composted. There are other biofilm materials, both vegetable fiber (for "plastic" wraps) and algae-based (for food wrapping).
Urine bricks, combined with seashells (which literally absorb carbon from the air in water (yes, there is air there, what do you think fish breathe)), have a bonus or removing toxics from the environment while carbon storing.
CLT methods for building replace emission-creating materials and glues with carbon-storing materials and glues. Again, there are some glues that are foresty, mycofarming, and algal based.
Most of the cost is the artificial subsidy for plastic and fossil fuel pollution built into the system, where we only calculate the Goods and not the Bads in GDP. Classical Capitalism, as done by Adam Smith, who created it, calculates both Goods and Bads in all levels of production and consumption and cleanup.
Are you listening? (Score:2)
I want to say one word to you... just one word. Are you listening?
Mycotecture.
How about: Paper, Metal, Glass, Concrete, Wood? (Score:1)
All abundant and/or renewable, all cheap, all recyclable and/or safely disposable. ... Duh?
Really dumb summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, so one of the ingredients of the urine bricks is "nutrients"?
Also sand might be very abundant in total, but sand appropriate for building with is much less abundant - river and beach sand work and there have been articles on Slashdot in the past about sand piracy and blackmarket sand. Desert sand, of which there is a huge abundance, is not appropriate, because it's too small and light.
Rather than some 'urine bricks', I'd be more interested if someone had found a way to make desert sand useful in construction.
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Oh, so one of the ingredients of the urine bricks is "nutrients"?
Also sand might be very abundant in total, but sand appropriate for building with is much less abundant - river and beach sand work and there have been articles on Slashdot in the past about sand piracy and blackmarket sand. Desert sand, of which there is a huge abundance, is not appropriate, because it's too small and light.
Rather than some 'urine bricks', I'd be more interested if someone had found a way to make desert sand useful in construction.
Yeah, I'm going to build a house with piss-bricks, full of bacteria, and organic nutrients for the bacteria to eat. As well - you are spot on about the sand. There's actually a building grade sand shortage.
Seriously - what is with some people? We're supposed to eat bugs because they are so yummy, live in places that probably smell like old urine in sleazy uncleaned bar restrooms, made with materials stuffed with urine, bacteria and food for the bacteria to work their magic.
Next they'll be tellling u
You might see the value after you sober up. (Score:3)
The disturbing thing is reading some of the commentary in response to this post. I am surprised how many germophobes and pissophobes read /. To clarify, the original article does not report about people peeing their infected urine into a bucket of sand to make funkodelic plaster to spackle your walls. Although, I suppose that some of the respondents, seemingly "under the influence" and having had too much beer tonight might find a bucket of sand a relief.
Quoting the original article: “Biostone: a mixture of sand (incidentally, one of Earth’s most abundant resources), nutrients, and urea – a chemical found in human urine. Pumping bacterial solution into a sand-filled mould, Trimble devised hundreds of experiments over the course of a year until he tweaked the recipe. The microbes eventually metabolised the mixture of sand, urea, and calcium chloride, creating a glue that strongly bound the sand molecules together."
The process uses urea, "a chemical found in urine". Urea is also found in the primordial chemistry of the universe. In humans, urea equals nitrogen. Recall that proteins are chains of amino acids (also primordial chemistry). They have a carboxyl -COOH (the acid) and an amine -NH2 (the amino-) terminus where the end to end polymerization takes place. When proteins degrade, urea (CH4N2O) is the final catabolic product of proteins, which being water soluble is eliminated in the urine. Remember that urine is just a clean ultrafiltrate of the blood, sieved by the kidney, from which unwanted metabolic waste is not resorbed. Urine is stored in the bladder until a socially appropriate opportunity, and in healthy people, it is sterile.
Recall that organic chemistry became a reality of science and industry when urea was synthesized in 1828 by Friedrich Wöhler. Being a carbonyl of two amides, it a useful backbone reagent for making other useful organic compounds. It is used liberally in many medicinal and cosmetic products and in many industrial processes. The majority is used for fertilizer. Those large industrial quantities are manufactured from ammonia and carbon dioxide at large chemical plants, not in a Slurm-like dungeon where drunken frat boys are getting themselves wet. If Biostone ever becomes a product, fret not that you will be living in a house of pee. Who was dumb enough to think that in the first place?
On the subject of "germs", remember, they are on you body by the trillions. They are necessary for our own health and the functionings of the entire biosphere. They are also abundant in industrial processes. The list includes mining and metal extraction, decomposition of oil, production of many drugs, production of many basic organic solvents and workhorse chemicals. They also make your food, such as yogurt and cheese. Imagine that, when you eat yogurt, you are simply eating a giant bacteria culture, as if your Yoplait container was just a fancy shaped Petri dish.
Microbial processes are also important in geology, having much to do with the deposition of stable mineral varnishes and caliches from water soluble salts, i.e, the kind of natural materials that are useful as mortars and cements. Read the article. That is what this study did. It used urea, calcium chloride, and sand to make an accretion that had adhesion and structural strength. The article mentions that ammonia outgassed from the process, meaning the process reverses the production of urea, so even if some nitrogen persists in the caliche, the pissophobes amongst us need not fear to live among the bricks.
After almost two centuries of industrialization, synthetic chemistry, and carbonization trashing the planet we live on, it should be inspiring that there are people making earnest efforts to find better solutions. Think of that next time you smear some skin moisturizer or sun block on your body - read the ingrediant list - urea. Or, if you prefer, take a golden shower.
How to solve the world’s plastics problem... (Score:2)
Skeptical (Score:2)
Has the long term effect of breathing stone fiber dust been studied?
Does the manufacture of Urea, made from natural gas, emit less carbon than the calcination of Portland cement?