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[...] buried in each used nappy [diaper -Ed.] are hidden treasures, according to Marcello Somma, who is head of research and development at Fater, an Italian joint venture between Procter & Gamble and Angelini Group.
Fater has developed what it claims is the first industrial-scale process that can extract these valuable materials, and it is already up and running in Treviso, Italy. Now, as part of a project called EMBRACED, it is building a biorefinery next door to make best use of these recycled substances.
Technical minds have been trying to recycle nappies since 1992, says Somma, but it has proved to be a ball of trouble.
"When you change a nappy you wrap it onto itself and so basically you have a kind of bomb of four waste types intimately linked with each other," says Somma. "There is plastic waste – polyethylene and polypropylene, paper waste – because there is cellulose, a super-absorbent polymer and the organic fraction – the human contribution."
Fater, which has been trying to recycle disposable nappies for a decade, has found the trickiest stage is at the start: opening it.
Hmm, the baby's first diapers must be especially valuable, containing the black tar they do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday October 08 2018, @09:22PM (1 child)
Unfortunately bleach is a truly horrifying pollutant - worse even than the mountains of plastic-wrapping around the countless "bombs" produced by disposable diapers. It takes less than one drop of bleach to kill everything in a gallon of water, and most people will use a LOT more than a few drops in that diaper bucket. And the bleach doesn't just go away because you've dumped it down the drain - it keeps killing microbial life all through the waste-management system (which can be a serious problem if it's too common - waste management typically uses at least one microbial phase to clean the water), and then goes on down the river, continuing to kill the microbial foundation of the ecology.
Of course, ordinary soap does almost just as good a job of cleaning the diapers - You don't actually care if the 99.9% of microbes you washed away are dead or not, and the last 0.1% will be hopelessly outnumbered by all their relatives still living on baby's ass. But soap alone doesn't get rid of stubborn stains, nor does it satisfy the neurosis of germaphobes - which as far as I can tell is the driving force behind the horrible health- and ecosystem-damaging scourge of anti-microbial soaps. Microbial symbiotes are important to our health and the strength of our immune system - and anti-microbials make no distinction between the good and the bad.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 08 2018, @11:15PM
And the best way to neutralize bleach? Throw in some organic matter in and let that oxidant potential do the job.
I don't know, like... use some reusable freshly soiled cotton diapers?
After 1 day, assuming sodium hypochlorite at start, you'll end in having a weak solution of table salt with water soluble organic matter of a lower enthalpy.
[citation needed]
Any oxidant is bound to go inactive in the environment in a short time. Sure, if it's concentrated and plenty, it may create havoc initially, but the environment will recover.
Mountain of plastic? Unless you spend extra energy to degrade it, you'll live with it for millenia (you wish, heh). It maybe not kill you, but it will keep degrading the biosphere by its simple physical presence (from animals ingesting it when at surface to stopping gas exchange and denying normal soil biome when burried)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford