Tallow in plastics – why? (2016)
impact-solutions.co.uk
impact-solutions.co.uk
US currency is made of a cotton-linen blend, so (pedantically) it is not paper. Per US Currency Education Program [1], "it would take 4000 double folds, forwards and backwards, to tear a banknote". Is this insufficient for UK uses? In my wallet I currently have a couple hundred in US currency from years 2003 to 2014. None of them are falling apart. (The US Federal Reserve [2] estimates that US currency lasts between 4.7 and 22.9 years, depending on denomination.)
Given the societal shift to digital payments, cards, etc, is the UK hoping to create banknotes that last until the end of time or something? (If so, plastics are probably a great choice. But I'm guessing that indestructible bills will eventually become quite economical to counterfeit, so you'll still want to cycle through security measures every few years.)
[1] https://www.uscurrency.gov/about-us/currency-facts [2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/how-long-is-the-life-spa...
I think the key benefit of polymer notes is the opportunity for far more security features. Holograms, Prismatic effects, braille printing, variable transparency, etc.
Also, they're probably cheaper, considering most of Europe uses polymer notes too.
The UK had issues with banknote forgery, so a change over to a new base material makes a good clean cutoff to say "no paper notes are valid anymore", which cuts off forgers too.
The US also has major note forgery issues, but to my knowledge they have never taken serious action against fake notes. If they did, they would probably switch to polymer too.
And the currency itself has numerous security features to detect counterfeits: https://carnation-inc.com/blogs/money-handling-blog/100-bill...
Wood pulp paper is by far the most common these days, but that's surprisingly recent (mid-19th century). Before that it was mostly cotton, linen and hemp.
Cellulose in wood is contained in a block of wood, not like the easily accessed strands of cellulose in cotton. It's mixed together with lignin and other components in wood. It is possible to make a weak, brittle kind of paper with straight wood pulp that's mashed and cooked and pressed. Mixing in a little sawdust to rag paper is an old practice. But properly freeing the cellulose requires both extensive mechanical shredding and chemical treatments. As far as 19th century technologies goes it's underappreciated. From what I can piece together, around 1800 in England, a labourer's daily wages would buy a few dozen sheets of paper. By 1900, they could buy literally reams and reams of the stuff.
According to a few sources I've found, paper is the name for anything primarily made of tangled cellulose fibers, which can be harvested from many different plant products. The more restrictive "definition", which I had been alluding to, considers only cellulose fibers derived from wood pulp as "true" paper.
Papyrus, the ancient Egyptian writing surface, is not considered paper because the raw material is not processed to remove most non-cellulose contents. Other non-paper writing surfaces throughout history include: vellum/parchment (made from prepared animal skins), clay, animal bones, bamboo and wooden slips, silk, leaves, bark, and I'm sure dozens of others.
I found this wikipedia page to be a good jumping off point for this knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_material
Edit: the additional context for this article is at the time the notes were released, there was a lot of anger when people discovered the notes contained animal products.
This anger seems somewhat misguided considering the number of animals that are butchered for food in the UK every day.
I suspect most notes end up being replaced mainly because they get tatty rather than being torn, though, and I would bet a high denomination that by that metric, polymer notes last far longer.
Confusingly enough the year on US Bank Notes is not when they were printed. For example, the current series is "2017A", which started being printed in 2019.
Perhaps it isn't paper in the US but rag paper is quite definitely paper in the UK.
When I was in the US I've often was given heavy worn out banknotes sometimes with tears. Haven't seen so many badly damaged pounds so may be dollars can benefit from more durable material too.
On glass filled parts you will often see a small ring around the "gate" (gates are where the plastic is injected). The gate is under enormous pressure and has a very high flow rate through it, so it tends to erode significantly more quickly. To counter that the gate is often an inserted part that can be changed out easily when servicing the tool, or made from a higher toughened grade of steel. Hence a small ring, a witness mark of where the join is.
A relative of mine worked in a chemical factory in Detroit, that made lubricants for metal working. Many of them were either formulated directly from tallow and lard, or were soaps. The materials were cheap, they worked, and were considered to be relatively non-toxic.
One thing I've noticed is that detergent based "soap" has disappeared from the market. It used to be that you could get detergent bars that contained no soap. They also didn't produce soap scum in hard water areas. Remember, "You're not really clean until you're Zestfully clean." Well, Zest was a detergent bar.
Today, looking for detergent "soap" at the store, it's gone. Even Zest is made from lard or tallow, last time I looked at the ingredients. I've banned soap from my house because I hate cleaning up the soap scum. We use liquid body wash instead.
/rant
Detergent products have gotten so bad that I have started mixing my own. I add STP to laundry and dishwasher powder and I never rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. They come out sparkling. The whole phosphate thing is overblown. Phosphates promote algae growth, but the algae also breaks down loads of other contaminants. The problem can be mitigated with a simple fountain in the discharge pond.
Removal of STP from everything is great for plumbers as pipes are now all lined with sticky soap scum which means periodic snaking.
And, yes, it's loaded with trisodium phosphate.
Also Alcojet is STPP not TSP. TSP is as alkaline as lye.
https://www.amazon.com/Sodium-Tripolyphosphate-Super-Cleans-...
I did some research and it has benefits from as little a 2%, and the top performers use 35%. Not only does it chelate hard water, it effectively turns any oil on your dishes into soap.
P.S. Do you mean sodium tripolyphosphate?
I have a question, I live in a soft water area so I'm not familiar with the problem.
Would you have the same issue if you were using vegetable oil-based soap (e.g. Marseille soap, Castile soap etc.)? Or is any type of "fat" going to cause the same issue?
Another 'huh?' product that contains animal derived ingredients are various dryer sheets (they don't all, but many do).
Tallow is a traded commodity. It is unlikely to get dumped.
Granted he’s a little weirdo, but I looked into in on the off chance there was something wrong with him or the plastics could be harmful, but the only thing I could come up with was that some bags have more tallow in them than others and that was what he was reacting to.
So, therefore, tallow in plastic = tasty for cats.
Though with all the misleading advertising these days who knows.. I don't know chemistry well enough to determine this.
....is such a semi-randomly grab-bagged set of statements similar to a set of nigh-unverifiable closing statements made as a desperate last-ditch attempt at proving a point in a debate that I feel it significantly weakens the article's stance, not strengthens it.
For example, with people with religious and moral objections to using animal products along governmentally-supervised transactional lines, whataboutism involving other parts of the supply chain/where animal products are used don't really serve to prove the point -- again. In turn, if we were to use this bit of what I'd consider to be somewhat faulty logic, the bank notes could be used as leverage in the future as the example in a list of products that uses animal products, just as other items in that list are being used as leverage today.
As for my position -- sometimes I eat meat, sometimes I don't, but I'd like to please avoid flesh in my money, however miniscule.
Is just reworded excuses as to the corporation’s choosing profit. For they will never say “profit us less.”
1. making a profit
2. going out of business
If you raise the cost of doing business for a corporation, the cost of their products and services is going to rise accordingly.
And in most cases - hey that’s fine. I disagree but it’s ok.
One area where I will always push back is on services that are required for life. Food. Shelter. Power (electric, etc) … healthcare.
If the service is critical, profit should be considered last, if at all. (As I write this, my elec provider has doubled its generation rate this month… yet making tons of profit for its shareholders…)
The same with healthcare.
I doubt the accuracy of this statement. But I'll make a largely-unsubstantiated claim of my own, nonetheless: for-profit agriculture has substantially increased the cost of for-profit healthcare by focusing on high-profit foods that are highly processed and addictive instead of foods that are actually good for us to consume.
Spend 5 minutes researching it with google what happens with collective farms.
> for-profit agriculture has substantially increased the cost of for-profit healthcare by focusing on high-profit foods that are highly processed and addictive instead of foods that are actually good for us to consume
People vote with their dollars what they want to eat.
Besides, if you do google the history of collective farms, the result in every case was famine, not breaking out in health.
What about kibbutzs and moshavs in Israel? Granted, they are small-scale,
It doesn't always have to. Some companies make so much profit that they could easily choose to absorb an increase in the costs of doing business without raising the costs of the products/services. They'd continue to make massive amounts of profit, just slightly less than they were making before and in some cases I think we should expect companies to do exactly that.
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/03/vegetarian-r...
Rightly?
Castrol wishes to be remembered to you.
Meanwhile, whales are breathing a sigh of relief
Is this Kosher? Halal? What about the implications for Hindu or Vegans?
It might seem silly for the rest of us, but for them is a matter of life and death.
I feel as tho the article ended right when it got to the question at hand.