this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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Polylactic acid is made via condensation of lactic acid, which can be made entirely from corn. It's still plastic, but just made from renewable sources. It's pretty recyclable and can be industrially composted, but in normal conditions it lasts as long as any other plastic.
I am by no means an expert on the subject, but isn't this basically the entire problem with plastic in the first place?
It's nice that this stuff is renewable and recyclable, but if it isn't properly recycled, it sounds like we're going to have the same problem we already have with existing plastics.
Yeah no, it's only marginally better. All my information comes from 3d printing, which is even worse since there's no way to recycle it since no recycling symbol. More accessible industrial composting would help though
I wonder if you could get away with 3D printing the recycling symbol on whatever you're printing. As long as the symbol/number match the materials I don't see why it would be a problem.
PLA doesn't last long. It starts to fall apart after a few months of exposure to sunlight in otherwise completely sterile environment. It is also easily compostable in hot industrial composters. It is also digestible by mammals, thus its micro particles are not an issue.