1 more rant. Somewhere in this thread is mention of polyhydroxyalkanoates as biodegradable plastic substitute. Marvelous for high margin plastics but the process of making involves similar processes to those that created petroleum. The obvious difference is that the petroleum generation didn’t require human investments in capital infrastructure, microbial care, and relatively small scale material extraction and purification. Hard to compete with what millions of years of Mother Nature did for free. The throughput can’t compete w demand and what passes through a refinery. In the absence of significant cultural changes wrt reuse, what is needed are biodegradable materials that can substitute, cost effectively, for bulk, single use plastics like those used in grocery bags and milk jugs. The mass of those continuously produced materials is enormous.
