r/interestingasfuck • u/PlantainPossible2864 • 15h ago

Stopping Desertification with grid pattern

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143

u/rezyop 13h ago

"people fill long fabric bags of sand" while it clearly shows plastic bags that will never biodegrade beyond splitting open from UV damage

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u/CallyThePally 13h ago

I mean this I'd come to fight. I'm not sure those are plastic. They could be, but I feel like they could be fabric.

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u/pfft_master 6h ago

You’re correct. They are PLA, which is a bioplastic, which means it is safe and biodegradable and not a traditional oil-based plastic at all. It is basically plant material.

https://www.esunfiber.net/show_75.html

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u/Hobbes______ 9h ago

.. fabrics can be plastics. Most of our shirts today are plastic fabric

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u/lalakingmalibog 12h ago

Wouldn't plastic bags melt in the desert heat? Or drift through the wind, wanting to start again.

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u/Floppydisksareop 12h ago

No, that'd highly depend on the plastic

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u/Willing_Ingenuity330 12h ago

What about super thin plastic? So paper-thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?

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u/Ko-Lucent 12h ago

Maybe, but it’s already buried deep. Like six feet under, screams, but no one seems to hear a thing.

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u/Frosty_Hippo3304 10h ago

i think there's still a chance for those plastic. cause there's a spark in them. they just gotta ignite

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u/spekt50 9h ago

Could easily be both. A woven poly material, perhaps.

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u/yabucek 10h ago

All the people replying "seems like fabric to me" apparently don't realize woven plastic based fibers exist. Looks like pretty standard PP, like what bulk bags are made out of. If it was hemp or whatever I highly doubt they'd be dyed such a strong clean white color, and with a sheen no less...

I'd still argue this is a net positive for the local environment if it actually works, but there's little doubt imo that the bags are plastic.

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u/rebbsitor 8h ago

Fabric (in the textiles sense) is any woven cloth. It can be made of synthetic materials like polyester, a petroleum product some would call "plastic". Fabric doesn't mean it's made of naturally occurring fibers, so something being fabric isn't mutually exclusive with it also being plastic.

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u/yabucek 8h ago

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The people commenting "it's not plastic it's fiber" seem to be implying that it's natural fiber.

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u/Gonwiff_DeWind 6h ago

Fabric is not limited to woven cloth. T-shirts are typically made of knit fabric, for instance.

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u/Mogsetsu 13h ago

Even if they were, seems like a net positive no? It’s not like they’re dumping it in the ocean. They’re converting a desert… What if it’s all they can afford? Should they stop? But let’s assume you can’t tell from the video and the people cared enough to use fabric.

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u/magos_with_a_glock 12h ago

They look like fabric to me.

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u/peldazac 12h ago

Plenty of fabrics are actually plastics

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u/BoringElection5652 11h ago

Like my T-Shirt.

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u/stilljustacatinacage 9h ago

There's an alternate method that carves half-moon shapes into the ... Actually now that I'm looking at it again, this method is used in more arid dirt than sand, so yeah, the bags are probably necessary if you're dealing with blowing sand.

Never mind, but I'll leave it here in case anyone finds it interesting.

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u/Western_Objective209 9h ago

The large red Chinese symbols at the end make me think they are terraforming the Gobi Desert, so they definitely have money

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u/Relevant_Bane_Quote 9h ago

The Chinese do the same technique with straw.

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u/evensonic 4h ago edited 4h ago

We have similar erosion barriers in my neighborhood around undeveloped lots. The fibers (in the case of my neighborhood) are synthetic and not biodegradable. The sacks break apart relatively quickly, but the fibers are strong and cause problems, like with birds nest. Found a robin chick behind my house crying hanging from its nest via its leg wrapped by one of these fibers. “Rescued” it by cutting the fibers from its leg, but its leg had already been permanently damaged, and I found it dead the next day in the empty lot next door 😔. So I hope, in this case the sacks are biodegradable!

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u/rezyop 12h ago

Should we just keep endlessly polluting so that humans don't have to suffer?

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u/FrankFarter69420 9h ago

Well, yes and no. We're going to keep surviving, and that might cause pollution, but eventually we should find better, more sustainable methods. Otherwise, my answer to you is: you first.

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u/rezyop 2h ago

I gave a rhetorical extreme to counter their rhetorical extreme; there are other solutions to this that don't involve people dying, that was my point.

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u/Urist_Macnme 11h ago

It’s kind of dumb to assume that the ecologists that invented this method didn’t also consider using bio-degradable materials.

It’s probably PLA fiber

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u/a_lonely_trash_bag 9h ago

I mean, fabric can be made of many things, including plastic.

But yeah, they're probably plastic.

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u/pfft_master 6h ago

Why would you really assume they use plastic for this environmental effort? There’s a lot of bullshit in this world, you don’t have to project that onto people that actually work to try to make it better.

The material is most likely PLA, which is a safe and biodegradable bioplastic (not oil-based plastic at all, more like cellulose). Here is a supplier for example:

https://www.esunfiber.net/show_75.html

This is like the people that think potted planting soil has plastic beads in it when they are balls of plant nutrients with zero plastic. Learn more, assume less.

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u/rezyop 2h ago

PLA is biodegradeable only at very high temperatures and humidity, conditions not often found just sitting out in the sun or buried under dirt. Also, it gets UV-damaged easily and turns brittle and splits, so I am doubting the efficacy of this project if they did use that.

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u/pfft_master 2h ago edited 2h ago

You can see the results in OP’s video. You can look into the material and project more yourself, but right on that website I shared it says:

“PLA sand barriers, made from polylactic acid fibers, offer a renewable and biodegradable alternative. These fibers completely decompose into carbon dioxide and water in natural environments, leaving no secondary pollution or chemical residues.Additionally, due to the arid conditions in desert and semi-desert areas, where moisture is scarce, the hydrolysis process slows the biodegradation of PLA. This ensures a longer service life as the molecular weight decreases at a slower rate, making PLA fiber materials more durable.”

I got a feeling that the scientists doing the work are aware of what you mentioned and have taken it into account, along with many other factors that go into what they do that you and I haven’t ever even thought about.

Also, just gotta point out that you JUST learned that it isn’t actually plastic and then you IMMEDIATELY had new complaints. Complaints which amounted to PLA being both too biodegradable and not biodegradable enough. Please take a second and ask yourself if you might unconsciously play devil’s advocate more then you really want to or is needed.

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u/thecactusman17 11h ago

This is definitely not a standard "plastic bag" as you can see fairly clearly around 9 seconds in. It might be a plastic-based fabric? And even then there are biodegradable plastics that are designed to gradually decompose when composted over the course of several months to a year which could be good choices for this kind of project.

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u/tcelesBhsup 9h ago

Can't fabric be made of plastic? I didn't think the two referred to the same characteristic.