I’m really disappointed with this narrative that natural fibres infused with chemicals are somehow still natural.
“Bamboo fibre” bowls made with plastic for a recent trend: Not just not biodegradable as the name suggests, but also not recyclable.
Like “vegan leather” (made from processed crude oil), these terms only seem to take us away from the products that we are actually looking for when something says “natural”.
I don’t understand what “natural” has to do with the article. The article mentions a new material that is transparent and has better insulating properties and makes no claim about being natural
Is it honest to still call their product wood? That's the question, calling it wood seems to misappropriate/inherit the assumed values of wood to their product. "Transparent wood" feels better than whatever other title they likely could come up with.
Thankfully we have had similar naming laws around the “wood” you mention. They are not perfect, but they are enough if you know what you’re looking for.
I had a discussion with a maker of hand crafted canoes about materials. He was surprised that his cedar-strip [1] canoes were lighter than the equivalent kevlar (which is well known as being lighter than fiberglass but more expensive and harder to repair). The key factor accounting for the weight difference was the amount of epoxy absorbed by each material.
Ultimately this is about material science and the various trade-offs inherent in each choice. Cedar-strip canoes have a highly valued aesthetic quality but "wood-strengthened epoxy" is an accurate description of the material; the epoxy, however, is not the distinguishing feature of cedar-strip, kevlar, nor fiberglass canoes.
Like all evolving innovations, "transparent wood" seems to be searching for its killer application and I don't expect the name used by researchers to continue if/when it finds product-market fit.
> Scientists develop transparent wood that is stronger and lighter than glass
That’s the article title, and it’s very easy to argue that they are looking to misappropriate the “wood = natural (and renewable) resource” properties. The current HN title from the paper even goes a step further by pairing it with “Solar-assisted fabrication“.
Wood has fantastic mechanical properties. It's also renewable to produce. I would gladly take a piece of half renewable transparent sheet vs a 100% petroleum acrylic sheet.
The normal bleaching process is quite energy intensive, so that is also a win.
No. If it's not 100% all natural it's green-washing.
Eh? Firstly there are plenty of “natural” or organic epoxies that can decompose.
Secondly that’s not the point.
Glass is a very energy consuming process, it’s heavy and a PITA to transport and it’s also a very good heat conductor which means for insulation you need to use multiple glass sheets with an air barrier.
This material is lighter, it’s a way to sequester carbon, it seems to be less energy intensive both to produce and transport and provides better insulation from the get go.
If this can be developed as a drop in replacement for window glass alone it can likely save a lot of energy both in the manufacturing and then in the heating of homes.
Even if it’s not biodegradable not everything needs to be, most glass isn’t recycled either, and it’s not like glass recycling is a particularly cheap process.
The glass from your glass recycling bin is usually just crushed and added as a filler to other materials not melted to make new glass.
(plastics not generally being recycled aside since that’s a much heavier topic) I’d honestly disagree that it’s better to embed plant material in plastics or other non-degradable material.
At least a fully plastic cup made of a single plastic could theoretically be recycled easily. When you embed it now has to have specific processes to deal with that before being recycled, and those processes might have to be specific to that one product (or at worst: the process becomes “burn out all the impurities, throw the smoke in the air”)
It is relatively straightforward to dissolve cellulose. So adding it to epoxy does not necessary make it harder to recycle. I can speculate that with the right chemistry it can be more energy efficient to recycle the mixture compared with pure plastic.
And to my point: You’re talking about a potential specific process for that one specific product. What if the manufacturer uses and emulsifier or infuses the cellulose with additional chemicals?
Yeah, I read an article about this last night. This isn't fundamentally different from how fiberglass works: a bunch of fibers embedded in a bunch of epoxy. That the fibers were at one point a tree doesn't mean I'd put this material in my wood stove on a cold day in February.
I have a similar grip with "plant-based meats" - no, it's not meat and doesn't accurately mimic meat either; and if you want to go a layer deeper, meat is already plant-based due to the animals eating plants which then get concentrated down into dense nutrients and calories, and if talking about high fat red meat, then in the exact proportions our body and brain needs -which makes sense since we're animals too.
> "meat is already plant-based due to the animals eating plants which then get concentrated down into dense nutrients and calories"
Sure. But it's much more environmentally efficient in terms of water use, carbon emissions, etc if we can make sufficiently tasty and nutritious foods directly from plants rather than going through the inefficient animal step. Many people also have ethical objections to consuming animals.
Please watch the documentary Sacred Cow which will counter your "more environmentally efficient" claim - as it's taking into account the holistic view of the full system of environmental processes.
It would be ‘meat like’ but it doesn’t make much sense for the marketing. And meat also refers to the edible part of fruits or something consistent. I’d give it a pass as its not really deceiving advertising.
Less so with those, as your examples are primarily a single ingredient - though most almond milk available now is full of junk other than almomd. And in those cases they're not trying to mimic other products or claim it's anywhere near equivalent nutritional and other values/quality of non-factory farmed meat. Maybe I just need time for my brain to unravel my definition of meat but there's a mob that tries to falsely claim equivalence.
“Bamboo fibre” bowls made with plastic for a recent trend: Not just not biodegradable as the name suggests, but also not recyclable.
Like “vegan leather” (made from processed crude oil), these terms only seem to take us away from the products that we are actually looking for when something says “natural”.