Cool slide show, Ann. I particularly liked seeing the BASF materials being used in food packaging applications. All you have to do is take a walk (I live out in the country and it's still a problem) and it's an eye opener to see the cups, bottles, and fast food trash littering the sides of the road. Given that it's harder to change people's behavior (although I can't understand littering, but that's a totally separate issue), it's comforting to know progress is being made on creating products that will be a bit easier on the environment.
Beth, that can be dissiapointing (littering, I mean). I learned not to leave a trace at an early age.
I am fascinated by the range of material solutions to this problem. Of course, the other problem being addressed is the feedstock. Reducing out dependence on oil is another useful result.
A green plastic films manufacturer stopped by the PackExpo booth of my company about four years ago, with some sample preformed bags. They wanted to test their bags on our equipment. We were happy to run the test right there.
The bags were incredibly stiff and "hard" compared to regular LDPE packaging material. This material sounded like cellophane when handling it (lots of LOUD crackling crunching noise). The material was also very, very fragile. It had no stretch, no give. Stress it just a bit, and it rapidly tore.
It was green (made from corn), and would degrade readily, but it wasn't very usable for packaging. There's still a lot of work to be done in the field to make a usable green material for packaging.
Beth, I also live in the country and I also see plastic litter on the roadside. In fact, I carry a trash bag, pick it up and bring it back to recycle. I can't understand littering, either: I used to go backpacking and the rule I learned is make it look like you were never there. At least if plastic trash is biodegradable it won't take an extremely long time for the plastic to break down and become harmless constituents of the ecosystem.
TJ, thanks for that input. I heard from several manufacturers of bioplastics and/or recyclable plastics (the BASF Ecoflex/Ecovio peanuts bag is both) that they had spent considerable time and effort getting feedback from users to overcome exactly the unpleasant characteristics you described. The BASF peanuts bag, for example, is not noisy like cellophane when you manipulate it and that specific problem was cited as one they had worked to overcome. So things have changed quite a bit in four years and these materials now exist--I've seen them--but they haven't yet been adopted in quantities that make them visible to end-users.
And of course, making so-called green materials from food crops, especially corn, is now a no-no.
These may have been the same bags that Frito Lay introduced for their Sun Chips in 2010. They were so noisy and had a such a bad feel that the Sun Chip sales actually fell about 10% during the year that they were on the market. It would be great to see a non-noisy solution that would be bidegradable.
Tim, you are correct, it was the same material. In the instance I described, the bags in question were pre-formed to run on the type of machinery that packages sliced bread.
Can you imagine that material when making your kids' lunch sandwiches?
Chuck, that appears to be lettuce or some other leafy vegetable. The thin film is mulch, which you put down around your crop plants to help keep down weeds and retain moisture in the soil. Many people use large sheets of black petro-based plastic, which is highly effective but does not biodegrade quickly and can leave harmful residues. I'm a gardener, not a largescale farmer, but I suspect it's put down before or during planting not after and holes punched through for the plants.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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