Australian ban on fish-shaped plastic soy sauce dispensers a world first

I thought it would have been very relevant.

It looks like a fish lure.

If this is floating around at sea I don't see why other fish (and maybe certain sea birds?) wouldn't think it's prey, and it even has a bright red indicator that makes it easy to spot.

But offer no benefit over a simple serving bottle.

Essentially a less cute plastic wrapper, no?

Keep in mind that PLA also leaks microplastics into food and could also be considered a risk to health just like other plastics.

The hard part about PLA is that while it is biodegradable, it's only in certain conditions/facilities who are set up for it, and it's not very common around the country. I'm all for what the company is doing, and I already do see a lot of PLA products in fast food (like soda cups), but it doesn't mean much if we don't have the facilities to properly dispose of it.

Source: I do a modest amount of 3D printing

Some people just don’t appreciate the irony of killing turtles with fish-shaped plastic, what can you do

PLA isn't food safe in 3d printing mostly because of layers on a print trap foreign material / bacteria and water can also seep into microscopic gaps into infill and it becomes a breeding ground. I doubt it would be useful for anything squeezy but it might be useful for single use forks and other utensils. But paper / wood can do those things already so I don't see PLA being much use. For sachets I expect the answer is paper with some kind of biodegradable lining which gives a product a shelf life of a few years but does degrade in time.

Also, some "biodegradable" products are only compostable in specialist facilities where it can be shredded and broken down with water / heat / pressure. I think PLA is a bit like that. If you print something out of PLA and stick it out in the garden or even toss it into a compost bin it'll still be there in 10 years although it might be faded, warped & brittle. Maybe it eventually biodegrades but it's not quick enough.

Unfortunately while PLA is technically biodegradable, it requires very specific conditions that can only be achieved in dedicated facilities. So it's not like you can throw it in the composting bin and be done with it. It will also survive for a long time in nature.

The thing is that mass-produced plastic items (like the plastic fish in question) are typically not produced with 3D-printing, because that would be incredibly slow and inefficient.

Instead, basically some kind of oil or molten mass is pressed into a form and then cooled down/condensed into a solid object. This way you can rapidly produce thousands of plastic items per minute. There is no nozzle involved, and you can do with fewer additives because the mechanical press removes the need for the filament to be so fickly 3D-printable. It can basically do with a bit more crude types of plastics, so you need a bit less additives to make the plastics more mendable.

PLA is pretty brittle AFAIK. these need to be squeezed, so i’m not sure it’d do… perhaps they could add something to it? but whether that additive would also be compostable… it’d certainly make it non-recyclable

You know what's killing more turtles? Irresponsible mega-corporations.

Burning plastic does not mitigate its environmental effects, and infact would increase air pollution and microplastics exponentially if we were to start.

I fully agree with the rest, but burning plastic is definitely not the answer.

People throw their waste everywhere because there’s not enough waste bins in comfortable walking distance

I see almost daily people throwing trash on the street in front of an empty recycle bin. I think the issue is more about people not giving a shit than convenience of finding a trashcan or keeping stuff in your pocket until you do.

South Australia will be the first place in the world to ban them under a wider ban on single-use plastics that comes into force on 1 September.

The issue is that you didn’t read the article 😊

A decent question. Especially if this ban allows the ripper pouch style single serve sauces.
I have collected a tonne of the fish shaped bad boys at river clean ups, so maybe they're somehow worse. Tbh takeaway sushi could improve in a lot of ways to reduce single use plastics, so kinda funny that the cute fish copped it.

It's sold in every sushi box in France. I guess it's a way to pretend it's a Japanese thing.