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Earth Science

Ditch Brightly Colored Plastic, Anti-Waste Researchers Tell Firms 82

Posted by msmash from the scrambling-for-solutions dept.
Retailers are being urged to stop making everyday products such as drinks bottles, outdoor furniture and toys out of brightly coloured plastic after researchers found it degrades into microplastics faster than plainer colours. From a report: Red, blue and green plastic became "very brittle and fragmented," while black, white and silver samples were "largely unaffected" over a three-year period, according to the findings of the University of Leicester-led project. The scale of environmental pollution caused by plastic waste means that microplastics, or tiny plastic particles, are everywhere. Indeed, they were recently found in human testicles, with scientists suggesting a possible link to declining sperm counts in men.

In this case, scientists from the UK and the University of Cape Town in South Africa used complementary studies to show that plastics of the same composition degrade at different rates depending on the colour. The UK researchers put bottle lids of various colours on the roof of a university building to be exposed to the sun and the elements for three years. The South African study used plastic items found on a remote beach. "It's amazing that samples left to weather on a rooftop in Leicester and those collected on a windswept beach at the southern tip of the African continent show similar results," said Dr Sarah Key, who led the project. "What the experiments showed is that even in a relatively cool and cloudy environment for only three years, huge differences can be seen in the formation of microplastics." This field study, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, is the first such proof of this effect. It suggests that retailers and manufacturers should give more consideration to the colour of short-lived plastics.
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Ditch Brightly Colored Plastic, Anti-Waste Researchers Tell Firms More

Ditch Brightly Colored Plastic, Anti-Waste Researchers Tell Firms

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  • No. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 )

    People need some colour in their life. Haven't we seen enough sepia-palette kitchens and living rooms already?

    • Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday May 27, 2024 @07:00PM (#64503887) Homepage Journal

      Then make the permanent stuff brightly colored, and the disposable stuff drab, so that people tend to prefer the more permanent stuff.

      • Great idea, seriously. Although it doesn't address the issue of malcontents bitching about everything, but I'm will to ignore them.

      • People buy more when the colors are bright. Capitalism isn't built for dealing with problems like this. Any company that sells packaging that's got drab colors will lose out to accompany that sells packaging with bright colors. It's the entire tragedy of the common thing but with plastic. It's also the same reason why it's such a pain in the ass to buy a matte finish computer monitor even though they are objectively better than a glossy finish

        • Or for anything disposable where it doesn't matter what is the underlying color of the plastic, they could just use a brightly-colored wrap on a dull or clear container. Which is what many drink bottlers do.

          • Unless the wrap is made of compostable paper you're just making the brightly colored label able to break down faster.

            • So? By volume it's a lot less plastic. Bottlers do it cuz it's cheaper to order one style of clear bottle and then put a wrap on it.

              • Any use of plastic when not absolutely required is abhorrent to me.

                I carry an all metal water bottle with an actual cork stopper, never purchase any beverage while out that comes in plastic or plasticized paper. and have cloth netting bags I use when shopping for produce.

                It just takes will and effort.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Misagon ( 1135 )

          I'm not sure I agree with that.

          I think that if the price is high, many consumers would try to justify the purchase of the item by it being suitable for more situations and without it feeling like it belongs to a fad. If it is expensive then the design should preferably be "timeless", and that means muted colours.

        • I barely remember it was so long ago but some major supermarket chain, I want to say Tesco but it long predates the now defunct Value branding, decided to use exceptionally plain packaging, white boxes, 1-colour printing and it was allegedly an enormous success. So much so every other supermarket had to copy the idea. When everyone is shouting in bold print, the quiet space stands out. Capitalism is a misdirection in this argument. Marketing finds a way regardless of the economic system in play.
        • an alternative may be to find a way to color our plastics to make them not react so badly to incident UV light? Or, to use the bright colors in things other than plastics? Or limit the amount of plastics used in disposable products? Or all those things, together, to some extent?

          I mean, you can still print in bright colors on paper/cardboard/glass/metal/wood/etc, the issue is just with brightly colored plastics.

      • "People" prefer to buy cheap, not colorful or drab. Companies prefer to use cheap shit to "keep costs down". And you can be sure that it is the cheap stuff that turned to shit, and not the colored. So, your suggestion won't work, because simple economics.

        • "And you can be sure that it is the cheap stuff that turned to shit, and not the colored.

          You do realize the topic of discussion is a https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com] that shows the colored stuff turning to shit?

          • Yes, I do realize the topic of discussion is something that clearly states in 2. Methods and Protocols, 2.1 that it is presumed that the composition of plastic is "similar".

            I will leave to you as a homework to check the meaning of "presumed" and "similar" and report back on what your conclusions as to the adequacy of the experiment are.

            I stopped reading this piece of crap about there.

      • Then we have scare articles about how Plastic lasts more than a lifetime, and that's a problem [pbs.org].

        Anyway, they probably could have saved themselves the study and asked people in the industry; that different colorants result in plastics being more or less resistant to UV is well-known (which is why nearly all outdoor-rated cable is black, for instance).

        • As a fun thing, I was shopping recently for chicken runs. Most of them have you attach the chicken wire/hardware cloth using zip ties. For 90% of them, it was obviously that they were including non-UV protected indoor type zip ties, because they were that clear color in the pictures. With the attendant complaints that the ties were breaking after a few months, letting animals get into to kill the chickens and such.

          I ended up spending an extra $20 and got a kit that came with hardware cloth for the bottom

      • You know that's a staggeringly good idea.
    • If your kitchen and living room derive their color entirely from the plastics they contain you might have a different problem...
    • You do the main container in the plain color and from a single plastic form and then use a removeable wrap around it that is in color Another alternative is to use stickers on the container.
      iT IS for the environment like now having to protect the paper straws by putting them in individual plastic packageing.

    • Sepia? Have you been living under a rock? Grey and black are the trend now. Nice matte black countertops with a grey backsplash. and black cupboards. It's about as inviting as a crypt.

  • Fast or slow, as long as input stays the same the steady state will stay the same. Might as well have it decompose as fast as possible, so that when we stop dumping long lived poison into the environment it clears up as fast as possible too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Erioll ( 229536 )
      That was my first thought as well, to encourage degradation so that the environment can fully process it, but I'm also not a chemist or a biologist, so that may or may not be better.

      • The final breakdown of those microplastics require 100-1000 years depending on the size and specific composition.

        If we go with 500 years then people from 20 generations down the timestream from us could start to enjoy a world without microplastics if we stopped manufacturing disposable plastics right now.

        That won't happen. Too many people are more interested in the personal convenience and luxury within their own lifetimes than are interested in the long term viability of the species.

        I guess that's what we

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hAckz0r ( 989977 )

      They should research to find some enzyme that causes all these plastics that are hard to recycle to have them naturally degrade in a 5-10 year time-frame. What ever the shelf life is, it should naturally expire at approximately the same rate. So, if a soda bottle can't be sold after 3 years, make it expire at 4.

  • Make all the plastics in the boring colours that are allegedly saf(er). Now EVERYBODY can wear AR glasses, backed by AI, so we see the materials in their intended colours. Charge for a DLC so you can change the colour palette! Ancillary information may be viewed. Hook into your EV cars! And, of course with the birth of this new technology, the inevitable afterbirth will appear: Advertising. ATSC 3 folks can have their evil end accomplished. OK, Zuckerberg et al, belly up to the bar!

    • Charge for a DLC so you can change the colour palette!

      Pantone just jizzed their pants.

    • no, no, no, the AR glasses have to be addressable directly by the marketing for the products to send the signal to make their boring black and white cardboard look like snazzy, lifelike, living color!
  • If you go shopping for plastics, rather than plastic goods, the vendors and spec sheets are rarely silent on UV sensitivity(at least in the context of an entire product line: the ones that are bad candidates for UV exposure might just not mention it; but the good candidates certainly will, as will the UV stabilizers if they have a line of additives for the purpose); so it seems much more likely that the people producing these plastic goods just don't much care; rather than that the researchers putting some
  • Fashion and science are finally meeting in the middle. And the middle is apparently all of our balls.

  • Wrong objective (Score:3)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Tuesday May 28, 2024 @03:19AM (#64504475)
    This is nuts. Our objective should be to reduce plastics production. Food & beverage containers should be at the top of the list of things to be banned outright. They really aren't necessary, we already have effective replacements for making food & drink conveniently portable, & they're among the biggest contributors to plastics pollution.

    The rate the plastics production, & therefore pollution, is increasing, makes any short-term calculations of how quickly they turn into worse pollution redundant. We already have an abundant & inexhaustible supply of toxic pollution that has permeated through everything everywhere.

    • Imagine if there was a global standard for food, beverage, and consumable chemical containers that mandated wide-mouth-mason-type ring and disc lids on glass containers.

      Make them 7cm ( 2 3/8" ), 14cm ( 5 1/8"), or 28cm ( 10 5/8) in diameter with a wall thickness of 5mm microwave safe glass, any height, lids and bottoms are textured non-slip interlocking ridges, labelling on the lids and sides printed using organic dyes on non-tree pulp paper (hemp, bamboo, etc.), lid gasket made of organic oils derived rub

      • Back in the 1970's I went door to door for the so called "Bottle Bill" in Massachusetts. It was a bill to mandate recycling of glass, metal and plastics. The bill succeeded and was law, but that said, the blue collar neighborhoods I went through, unanimously slammed the door in my face/yelled at me/told me in no certain terms what a jerk i was for extolling the virtues of recycling. Oh, I also did the same thing for women's rights and had the same experience.

  • Nothing quite highlights the level of absolute greed and corruption, than knowing you’re directly contributing to the massive problem of microplastic poisoning damn near everything it touches, and yet the best you can do is recommend a preferred color.

    It’s like listening to a doctor in 2024 advise a smoker use a [sponsored] brand of cigarettes instead of cessation. Don’t we know better by now? If not, when?

    • Nothing quite highlights the level of absolute greed and corruption, than knowing you’re directly contributing to the massive problem of microplastic poisoning damn near everything it touches, and yet the best you can do is recommend a preferred color.

      It’s like listening to a doctor in 2024 advise a smoker use a [sponsored] brand of cigarettes instead of cessation. Don’t we know better by now? If not, when?

      While I don't want to stomp on your narrative, the majority of oceanic plastic isn't from us. The Philippines, China, Thailand and some African nations are dumping most of the perfectly recyclable, domestically produced PVC plastic.

      The US and Europe contribute only around 10 percent of the total.

      I get UN reports about efforts to curb plastic dumping in Africa, and it is sort of amusing, because they have to stick to the narrative that it is the fault of the USA as close as possible, knowing that desp

  • "Hey, Bill - if we put a lot of pigment molecules into a plastic mix, will that increase or decrease cross-linking polymerization?"

    This is why people use ugly PLA for utility prints too.

    Now, if they told us why blue pigments are the worst, that would be quite a study.

  • Okay, I can see that different pigments will have an effect on plastic degradation. But do they degrade to microplastic, then stop degrading?

    And of course there is the problem of the countries that produce most of the oceanic plastic will likely ignore this news even if it is somehow good.

    The Philippines, China, Thailand, and Some African nations are the major players in the ocean plastic issue.

    The Philippines are working to solve their contributions, the UN is working with th eAfrican nations, I'

  • I mean sure the brightly coloured plastic might degrade faster, but isn't that the ultimate destiny of all the plastic regardless of the speed it degrades?
    Anyway isn't plastic degrading faster a relatively good thing compared to longer-lived plastics that would stay as microplastics for longer?

  • "You can have any color you want as long as it's black." - Henry Ford. While we're at it, why don't we mandate that every color be Mao-suit olive drab?

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