www.inverse.com: If you’ve ever used a paper straw, you know the singular disappointment of trying to sip a refreshing beverage through a soggy, slowly collapsing tube.
Of course, the alternative isn’t much better: Plastic straws may offer a satisfying drink experience, but each one we use adds to the roughly 8.3 billion polluting beaches around the globe.
7 comments:
The idea of see-through wood material that is just as structural and sturdy as plastic or other wood materials is so interesting. Theatres around the world are trying to reduce our carbon emissions and become more sustainable. Even though this material is only going to be used for straws, I am excited to see if it evolves over the years and becomes a main part of theatrical construction. I am hopeful that change will actually occur, as oftentimes the material that produces less carbon emissions becomes too expensive to mass produce, or companies have no interest in changing their product to better the environment. The idea of see-through wood material, which is more sustainable and takes up less carbon emissions to make, is very appealing, but I worry that it won’t come into effect in our general society until it can be mass produced and shipped around the world to be used. With climate change being such a big issue and so controversial, it’s easy to see how see-through wood would be less than desirable. However, if it means reducing our carbon footprint and helping stop global warming, I’m all for it.
Okay the idea of transparent wood blows my mind. Though this article does not have the intended audience of theater technicians the possibilities in the theatrical world for this technology are endless. Theater is often considered environmentally damaging or wasteful by the average muggle so with material advances in the outside world those same materials can be used to make theater more sustainable. These innovations can also bush our art to the next level. Though masking would be a pain, imagine a platform made out of wood that is completely transparent. Technicians tend to adapt different technology to the needs of a theater or show and I am so interested to see how this technology will be adapted in the future. To me the possibility of clear wood and what that means for the future of scenic design and technical direction is huge and I am so excited to see what is done with this technology.
Theo
Transparent wood was not something that I expected to read about today… However, it seems awesome, the fact that it is flexible and moldable is a huge plus. Reading about the science for how this works was interesting, the article made it sound like it was a super easy thing to just do (although it probably wasn’t), it just seems simple to create. I’m not sure why I was surprised to read that the manufacturing of this product does still require wood, and that a mass production of it could still lead to deforestation. It is still worth noting that the production of the transparent wood does have lower carbon emissions – baby steps are still steps. I would love to see real-life applications of this material; I’m not sure how quickly it would become truly practical in our industry, but it is a cool thing to think about the possibilities for.
Transparent wood… this is a very interesting idea as a plastic replacement. There are boundless pros and cons to it. On one hand, wood is technically a sustainable product. That being said, of course, deforestation is a massive problem in the world, and an increased wood demand would do no favors to this issue. We need more sustainable farming, which exists, but currently is not doing enough. Furthermore, it seems kind of counterintuitive that the lignin is removed and replaced with epoxy. Epoxy does not seem like it would be the most environmentally friendly thing, but the article claims that there are bio-options available. If the lignins are replaced with a petroleum-based epoxy or other resin, that kind of just makes this transparent wood plastic with extra steps. I would be curious to learn more about how scalable this process is, as in, how big of a piece of wood could be converted? Could an entire log be made transparent? Or can you only transform paper thin pieces of wood? How does it physically compare to plastic? Is it brittle, pliable? Many many questions… would definitely like to know more about this stuff.
This seems like it would be great because the researchers say that it would be better for the environment. It just seems really weird that they would do all of this research and testing to find a sustainable way to make see through wood and then openly admit to the fact that they did not give any consideration to how much wood that this process would use. They fully did not give any consideration to how this would affect deforestation practices. And it seems like if you are trying to make a see through wood material that is sustainable and does not harm the environment much when compared to other see through materials then you would want to take in to account how much wood would be necessary for the process. It is just simply wild to me, that is all.
This is a really interesting article - transparent wood and delignification are concepts that are completely new to me. The science behind the delignification is really fascinating and it’s curious how epoxy was the greenest solution - I’m sure none of the processes in creating the wood were non-hazardous. To echo Katie’s comment, with such a large potential for deforestation, it’s interesting how they didn’t really specify how much wood they would use in the end. I believe that green materials are and will continue to be really important in the development of new items and construction techniques. The possibilities with this material as with many other new types of materials are vast, and I’m really excited to see this technology make it out of the development phase and see where it is implemented first. While I’m sure that first implementation probably won’t be theater, if it does become a more mainstream material I’d love to see how it’s used in a theatrical context.
Transparent wood yooo. That’s a game changer. Think of all of the different applications you could do with this?? No more expensive acrylic!! But only god knows how expensive this material runs for. And think of all of the cool things you could make with this! But like, how was this actually a functional living plant in society or was it manufactured and engineered solely on the purpose of replacing expensive acrylic? What was the reason behind making it transparent then? And why wait so long to discover or make it known to the public if we know that it could possibly help us in the long haul. Can we recycle this wood? Can we paint over this wood to also make it look like another kind of wood? There are a lot of questions with this one. How does it cut? Does it get bendy and early too? How does it act when it’s wet? What’s the sawdust look like?
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