this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Sorry but why a polymer?
We have lots of natural hard fibers in the form of ground up pips and pits from fruits.
We don’t need to fix plastic, we need to replace plastic.
Baby oil already removes eyeliner, without being problematic for most users, and many things remove permanent marker, so what does this add?
Starch is a polymer. Cellulose is a polymer. Chitosan is a polymer, as is chitin. They're just materials made of long chain, repeating units. One of the ways we can "fix plastic" is by making materials that have similar properties out of naturally-derived stuff that has nothing to do with fossil sources, like plants, arthropod shells, and fungi. We leave a LOT of possibilities just lying around in food production waste streams. This is exactly the same as "replacing plastic," and the only real difference is which version writers like to use in their articles.
I mean that’s great and stuff but why are we manufacturing something to replace what we can just make from waste streams? I just don’t really get it because I’ve been using scrubs and soaps with natural pit as the exfoliant for like most of my life and microbeads were just a way to use waste plastic, so I don’t get the whole… any of this. We already have things that are fine. Why do we need to manufacture replacements when a pit grinder will do?
Let them find plastic replacements even if you think there's enough peach pits for your face scrub. The important part is finding a way to replace plastic.