The disposable cups are made on special thermo forming lines, the sheet is extruded, the cups stamped into hot (soft) sheet, then trimmed from the sheet, the excess sheet is sent back to the main feed after shredding, so recycled inside the machine.
Vacuum forming, with a one sided tool (above is male + female tool, double sided) is also possible, output is less.
Italian and Chinese plants are available, also Indian, they are not expensive, think big size sedan price for the machine alone.
Output starts from about 20 kilos per hour, for small cups on a small machine.
This can also be done in thin wall injection molding (ice cream cups), and carousel molding (soda bottle caps).
You can search on line if you feel like.
Vacuum forming, with a one sided tool (above is male + female tool, double sided) is also possible, output is less.
Italian and Chinese plants are available, also Indian, they are not expensive, think big size sedan price for the machine alone.
Output starts from about 20 kilos per hour, for small cups on a small machine.
This can also be done in thin wall injection molding (ice cream cups), and carousel molding (soda bottle caps).
You can search on line if you feel like.
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I calculated based on a 230ml cup, and "apparent" 2 to 3 mm wall thickness, estimated from picture.
If you are talking 70 ml cups (first time you mention that), they will obviously weigh about 1/4 of what I calculated, and that for thick wall.
So 220 micron walls, and 70 ml?
Yes , then they can weigh a few grams only.
In any case, I am still shattered by the 3000 tons of yearly waste.
From just one factory.
Most people think "what problem can this small cup/bag/whatever be?"
Well, now we have a hint.
Yes, it may be "cheaper than washing" .... so what?
Garbage keeps piling sky high.
If you are talking 70 ml cups (first time you mention that), they will obviously weigh about 1/4 of what I calculated, and that for thick wall.
So 220 micron walls, and 70 ml?
Yes , then they can weigh a few grams only.
In any case, I am still shattered by the 3000 tons of yearly waste.
From just one factory.
Most people think "what problem can this small cup/bag/whatever be?"
Well, now we have a hint.
Yes, it may be "cheaper than washing" .... so what?
Garbage keeps piling sky high.
My gran often mentioned that when the chip shop first opened down the road, she'd nip down with her own bowl and they'd fill it with chips, at work we use our own mugs, Steve's mug was the stuff of legend, I bet if you tried to smash it, the muck ( tanin? ) on the inside would have the structural integrity to hold it together, all adds to the flavor.
3000 tons is the big elephant in the room.
Tea stalls are not having running water, they use the old three tub rinse method, and used glass as the material of the serving containers.
The serving size kept getting smaller with inflation, and at the end of the day the washing up water got dirty. So plastic glasses came in the picture. Hygiene was also a factor.
The glass thermos incident is old, 1985 or so, we still can find the glass refills today, if you know where to look.
Stainless lined flasks tend to leak into the housing, cheap Chinese stuff, and are hard to clean when trying to remove tannin.
Best to have tea at a place that has running water, and a clean kitchen, both are different things here!
Tea stalls are not having running water, they use the old three tub rinse method, and used glass as the material of the serving containers.
The serving size kept getting smaller with inflation, and at the end of the day the washing up water got dirty. So plastic glasses came in the picture. Hygiene was also a factor.
The glass thermos incident is old, 1985 or so, we still can find the glass refills today, if you know where to look.
Stainless lined flasks tend to leak into the housing, cheap Chinese stuff, and are hard to clean when trying to remove tannin.
Best to have tea at a place that has running water, and a clean kitchen, both are different things here!
The world uses one million tons per day of plastic (367 million tons in 2021, see https://www.statista.com/statistics/282732/global-production-of-plastics-since-1950/ ). The dismal fact of the matter is that most of this will end up polluting the environment, sooner or later.
Recently a few local cities have decided to ban one-time-use plastic grocery bags, which seems to help some people sleep better at night because they think it will "save the environment".
Like many of us on this forum, I am not so quick to believe, until I see some actual numbers. So I weighed a few grocery bags on the accurate digital scale at work. They averaged 8 grams apiece.
We can easily do a quick-n-dirty order of magnitude estimate as to how big an issue these bags are on a world-wide basis. Let's start with the extremely generous assumption, that seven billion human beings, each buy something in one of these grocery bags once a week, for a daily use of one billion bags.
At eight grams apiece, that's 8 billion grams of plastic per day, or 8000 tonnes of plastic grocery bags. That seems like a lot, until you put it in context: remember, we make and use 1 million tons of plastic every single day.
Do the division, and you'll find the grocery bags amount to 0.008 of the total; those 8000 tons of plastic grocery bags amount to less than one percent of the plastic made and used per day.
In the same cities where 8-gram plastic grocery bags are banned, supermarkets will gladly sell you thousands of other products packaged in much larger quantities of plastic. For example, I bought a small single-serving salad for lunch, which came in a clear plastic container weighing 42 grams - five times as much as a grocery bag.
The same supermarket will also sell you bread (each loaf packaged in a thin plastic bag just like a grocery bag), plastic trash bags, milk, juice, water, butter, and hundreds of other products, each packaged in far more than 8 grams of one-time-use plastics.
And yet, somehow, people are soothed by the ban on the grocery bags, without a clue that even if the entire world banned every last disposable grocery shopping bag, it would remove less than one percent of our daily plastic waste problem. We don't even seem to notice that the plastic bag around our pre-packaged loaf of bread, or our potatoes, or our fresh broccoli florets, is exactly identical to the grocery bags we despise so much.
Since this is a thread about lightening the mood, here is the amazing story of one Canadian couple who, lacking the money to buy any land in this very expensive part of the world, instead made a fantastic floating home, on their own floating island. Almost everything they used was recycled, or obtained from nature. Even the plastic floats that support the island are mostly recycled from local fish farms:
-Gnobuddy
Naresh, that’s too blanket of a statement. I have owned a few of the SS vacuum jugs and only ever had 1 fail. I currently have and use 3, 2 of which are over 20 years old. I use them for both hot and cold drinks and soups and don’t have a concern with build up on the insides, so I’m not sure why your experience might be that much different
Lighten the mood? Okay I think I will note the rain free day and take the dog for a walk. That does wonders for lightening my mood.
See you all in a while.
See you all in a while.
I am not in a light mood. I am not really down and out or depressed, guess I am the very much crazy, provocative grympy old man I use to be, it's just I cannot get the strength or inspiration or just the steam pressure to be on all 1000 +1 projects. Sometimes I wish was a fox ....
No, too much "trash talking" going on here.
Maybe some 1950's DIY Audio will help.
Those were the days, when you had a slim female helper, on her knees, handing you the parts.
I'm sure that image sold a lot of speaker kits.
Not disagreeing, expanding on one point:
State-wide bans are happening:
https://www.knkx.org/local-news/202...single-use-plastic-bags-finally-taking-effecthttps://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/plastics/carryoutbagshttps://www.marineconservation.org.au/which-australian-states-are-banning-single-use-plastics/https://www.newscentermaine.com/art...esses/97-79186e59-81df-4841-9b1e-c1aa7dc65c2d
It's not just tons of plastic. Wildlife gets entangled. The minimal-cost bags are light enough to float on the wind yet suffocate or strangle small animals. That's before we discovered that while plastic may "break down", it really just gets too small to see. Small fish fill-up with swallowed plastic (they think it is plankton) and starve. Then the lobsters starve, and the Maine economy collapses.
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No coffin here. Just a hot flame and they can take the ashes, stuff em' into an etch-O-sketch so the grandkids can play with me when I'm gone.
Apparently there is a very large floating island of trash in the Pacific Ocean.
We did have efficient scrap recycling, rag pickers would separate the plastic, but with thin plastic, it is not worth their time.
We do use a lot less packing material here compared to more 'advanced' nations, but we still have choked animals and choked drains.
We also have a fairly efficient plastic recycling, older plastic gets turned into cheap bags, furniture, car bumpers and so on.
Wood polymer composites using saw dust and recycled plastic as the binder have found usage.
But this is going a little off topic.
We did have efficient scrap recycling, rag pickers would separate the plastic, but with thin plastic, it is not worth their time.
We do use a lot less packing material here compared to more 'advanced' nations, but we still have choked animals and choked drains.
We also have a fairly efficient plastic recycling, older plastic gets turned into cheap bags, furniture, car bumpers and so on.
Wood polymer composites using saw dust and recycled plastic as the binder have found usage.
But this is going a little off topic.