Toxic Compostable Plastic, New Limits to Recycling, and a New Sustainable Design Philosophy
A round-up of some interesting green graphic design articles I've found.
This week is dedicated to all the interesting articles that I felt didn’t warrant individual Substacks themselves but I think are still worth sharing. Some of this news isn’t from the last month—consider the “month” more of “things I’ve come across recently” . :)
DESIGN
Cardboard can be Recycled 25x or more Without Degrading in Quality, not 7x as Previous Believed
This is what really got this concept going: this awesome study from 2022. It showcases that uncoated cartonboard fibres can be recycled many, many more times than previously believed.
The study set out to find how a fibre blend used for the production of white lined folding boxes fared over 25 recycling cycles. While a previous study – which focused on the paper grade structure used to produce corrugated board – found a 5% to 10% decline in the material’s mechanical properties over the same duration, Graz University’s more recent research demonstrated “no negative effect on the mechanical properties” of unfinished and uncoated cartonboard recycled at least 25 times.
Rene Eckhart, senior scientist at Graz University of technology, explains that during the 25 cycles, “When it comes to the mechanical properties, we hardly saw any effect at all.
“I wouldn’t even say that 25 is the limit.”
Therefore, the report concludes that “in principle […] it can be clearly stated on the basis of this study that the fibre itself allows recycling over 25 cycles without further difficulty and no limiting trend can be foreseen in this study.
New study suggests cartonboard can be recycled 25 times without loss of integrity
This development is SUPER cool because paper recycling rates are high (but could be higher). Granted, not all carboard has this limitless recycling potential—food packaging and coated packaging isn’t always possible to recover the fibres due to laminate structures. But it still busts an age-old myth wide open.
HEALTH
A Canadian Study Reveals “Compostable” Takeout Containers Leech High Amounts of PFAS into Food
Single-use plastics suck right, anything’s better than that! Canada recently banned all single-use plastics for take-out food containers and other disposable cutlery. But it turns out the “compostable” plastics might also be bad for our health (in addition to not truly being compostable). In order to have the compostable material be food/oil/grease/water resistant to handle soups and all other manner of foods, the materials have been coated in PFAS which are a family of chemicals deemed “forever chemicals” as they do not break down in any meaningful timescale in your body.
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a group of more than 9,000 human-made chemicals that contain fluorine bonded to carbon, a strong chemical bond that makes them hard to break down. That means they accumulate over time in the human body and the environment.
PFAS are frequently used in applications that require strong water-resistant qualities, from waterproof mascara to non-stick cookware to takeout containers.
The PFAS were found in paper and compostable takeout packaging across Canada.
In the new study, published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, researchers from Canada, the U.S. and Switzerland tested 42 kinds of paper food packaging collected in Toronto between February and March 2020, including compostable paper bowls, sandwich and burger wrappers, popcorn serving bags, and bags for desserts such as doughnuts.
“The bag and bowl samples each contained five to 14 different PFAS.”
The research on PFAS is still ongoing—not all PFAS have been studied to understand whether or not specific PFAS or all PFAS are harmful, however:
Very few PFAS have been studied in detail, but those that have been are linked to a variety of health effects in humans and animals, including increased risk of cancers, reduced immune response and fertility, and altered metabolism and increased risk of obesity.
"We know that some PFAS are toxic," said Miriam Diamond, professor at School of the Environment at the University of Toronto and senior author of the new study. "We don't know whether all PFAS are toxic because there are too many to study."
Health Canada says there's evidence other PFAS that are replacing banned PFAS are also associated with environmental or human health effects.
In the meantime, levels of PFAS are detectable in the blood of Canadians and the Government of Canada is continuing to monitor for certain chemicals. As of 2016 and 2017, 98.5 per cent of Canadians had PFAS in their blood.
So, what do we do? Other than stop eating take-out as much. Well, there’s some evidence that donating blood can actually significantly reduce your PFAS load. It is the only proven way to remove these forever chemicals from your body. I guess modern-day bloodletting has turned from leeches to blood donating.
DESIGN
Instead of Design for “Re-Use” We Should Design for “Disassembly”
There’s a lot of discussion over “design for reuse”. I’m personally not a fan of this, except for very certain situations: re-filling jars/containers or similar: use cases that reflect a repeat behaviour where the vessel for re-use was designed primarily for that specific refillable use case. I’ve seen a lot of complexity and wasted materials go into cardboard boxes in an effort to get the end customer to “reuse” them in some disjointed way. Nobody really wants to reuse the dirty cardboard boxes they get in the mail except for a few practical purposes like catching paint drips or incidental reusals. It’s merely wishful thinking and not really thinking realistically about the issue; nobody will actually fold up the cardboard package their clothes come in to form a hanger and then seriously use that over a lifetime.
So what’s another option? Design for Disassembly.
In this 2023 paper by James Broughton discusses why we should fight for design for disassembly and the right to repair from an environmental perspective:
To design for disassembly or deconstruction is to create products with the intention of minimizing value loss at the end of life. In the context of an LCA, this design factor would lead to materials that are “cradle-to-cradle” in scope. Waste generation is inherent to almost every process or service and leads to overall degradation of both raw material utility and monetary value.
For example, minerals used in the electronics industry are limited in availability; however, disassembly of electronics and material recovery proves difficult due to components' composite structure. Furthermore, current processes by which materials are recovered from electronics pose a significant threat to human health. In the construction industry, many materials used on a large scale can be recovered, reused, and repurposed. Steel, wood, concrete, and asphalt can contribute to a more sustainable built environment by being reused.
The paper lays out many different ways in which both capitalism (lol), people and the environment (awwww we have an overdone people, planet, profit circle) can benefit from design for disassembly. Naturally, this goes against especially big tech’s desire for their technology to be as proprietary and as difficult to repair as possible. It does however, fit nicely with the ongoing fight for the Right To Repair that’s gaining ground in Europe and will hopefully continue to gain traction in North America.
As of 2021, iPhone 12 and 13s (soon to be followed by M1 Macs) will have “Self Service Repair” options that instructs consumers on how to repair their iPhone displays, batteries, and cameras. More repair guides will come. This definitely was NOT done out of Apple wanting to be sustainable or kind to consumers: the announcement came after Apple Shareholders filed a resolution to pressure the company into Right for Repair after several class-action lawsuits and regulators started pushing back against Apple’s proprietary standards of repair.
Either way, it’s a good start and hopefully we can have Design for Disassembly integrated into almost every facet of our leaves. Technology that breaks will be easier to disassemble and recycle various parts, including precious heavy metals like lithium, and other components that are both easily recyclable and in high demand. I hope this can spill over into our world of design as well, with packaging accommodating and embodying different implementations of design for disassembly. What if all technology boxes came with the option to send any precious metal components back to the company for a refund once the device reached end of life? Allowing you to pop the rest of the plastic or glass casings into the recycling. I know plastic recycling is questionable, but being able to disassemble and more importantly repair our items when they fail can be a powerful force against designed obsolescence. The more modular our tech is, the more we as consumers have power over it: remember the soldered into the motherboard? I’d love to return to those days, especially for laptops, gaming systems, phones, and other pieces of technology that we replace frequently.
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