Converting rice into low-carbon plastic: Bringing hope to a struggling Fukushima town

I was given a strange drinking straw a few months ago while in a restaurant in Vietnam. I was told it had been made from rice plant material. About half the cafes and restaurants in Vietnam had either such paper or non-plastic straws and some had signs telling customers not to use plastic.

Japan has a long, long way to catch up with the rest of the world on ending single-use plastics, if it ever does. This Fukushima firm will have to convince plastic-loving Japanese service operators and others to change their ways. Good luck!

The plastic isn't biodegradable, Imazu said, but using rice cuts the petroleum products involved - and growing more rice in Namie reduces overall atmospheric CO2.

Fine, but if it's not biodegradable how is it supposed to be disposed of after use? Let me guess, you have to burn them, which means CO2 emissions, unless you install a furnace that is hot enough to burn all the dioxins and have a smoke filtration system that eliminates the worst of the CO2 gasses emitted.

It is still plastic, just not as much. This is not the answer or even a part of the answer.

Plastic can be recycled into plastic bricks used for home construction.

An agreed upon life cycle cost model is needed.Japan should try to learn from Finland's moves toward a circular economy, or any other efforts to reduce the controls the petrochemical industries have.

https://ym.fi/en/strategic-programme-to-promote-a-circular-economy

That's a switch. It's normally rice made from plastic not plastic made from rice.

Haha, greenies in last despair again, nothing else, just trying the next useless and senseless thing for their weird agendas.

I don't believe it for a second. Growing rice releases, by far, the most greenhouse gases of any crop. Are they calculating the methane released from growing the rice?

Microplastics are now on the ocean beds and in our food and water systems and are found in baby formulae and mother's milk.

They might as well make plastic from the fossil fuel fed into all of the farming machinery used to grow the rice.

Japan's future is one of depopulation and ghost towns. Places with massive historic tsunami risk are the ones to preserve. To do so promotes future tragedy.

low-carbon waste, but waste nevertheless. better to change the mindset, but I'm not holding my breath.....

where contaminated soil from the fallout of the Fukushima nuclear plant was kept and which is now in the works to be converted back to a rice field

I don't think you should do that.