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There have been plenty of stories about COVID-related shortages of everything from semiconductor chips to toilet paper. CNN adds shipping containers to that category. What used to be a fairly cheap commodity—as recently as a year ago you could rent a 40-foot steel container on a ship bound from China to Europe for under $2,000—has increasingly become scarce and expensive. Booking that same container costs more like $14,000 these days. How the dominos fell: The pandemic caused big shipping lines to cancel a slew of sailings. As a result, when things started to heat up again, those empty boxes hadn’t been brought back to China.
And the situation has only persisted. That’s due to a number of reasons. A lot of what is transported in reverse—to China—is cheap stuff like waste paper. With shipping prices where they’re at, those trips don’t make financial sense right now. But on the flip side, getting empty containers back to China ASAP does make sense, because exports command such a high price; that has inland firms struggling to get shipping lines to lose the time sending boxes to them.
Further, there’s a bottleneck at ports, with ships taking as much as four times as long to dock and unload, further reducing the number of available containers. Indeed, the South China Morning Post reported that China’s major Ningbo-Zhoushan Port was locked down Aug. 11 due to a dock worker’s positive case of the delta variant; things weren’t back to normal for a full 14 days.
And all this comes amid record production: The Wall Street Journal reported in early August that the 5.4 million 20-foot-equivalent units of the steel containers are expected to be produced this year, largely in China; in 2019 the corresponding figure was 2.8 million. As one expert put it to the Journal, in principle, there are more than enough containers out there; in reality, they’re languishing where they shouldn’t be. (A Brooklyn home made of shipping containers recently sold for $5 million.)
Source:https://www.newser.com/story/310845/the-world-is-dealing-with-a-shipping-container-struggle.html
This topic has been coming up about biodegradability and we want to offer some information on it.
It is important for all of us to understand what we are being sold.
Firstly, though, let’s clarify what we mean by biodegradable. In an increasingly eco-conscious world, it’s a term we hear a lot. However, with more and more products carrying that label, it’s important that we know what we are talking about.
When materials biodegrade, they break down into ever smaller pieces once they’ve been thrown away. All materials do this, even plastics, which break down into what we call microplastics – i.e. plastic particles smaller than 5mm. As such, it’s not a very precise term. However, we call biodegradable those products that decompose into organic material with the help of bacteria – and without leaving toxins behind.
Biodegradable alternatives to plastic straws include products made from organic materials such as straw, pasta, bamboo, or paper. These break down without leaving a trace in a timescale sometimes as short as weeks.
However, businesses should always be aware of precisely what they are buying. Straws made of polylactic acid, or PLA, a type of organic plastic, are often branded as biodegradable. However, this isn’t strictly true. For these materials to degrade, special conditions and technologies are required. In the ocean, they have not been found to degrade at all over a year.
Disposable plastic straws are no longer a viable option. With research showing that consumers are more receptive to products that are legitimately sustainable, they don’t make business sense. Yet, given the environmental impact of plastic straws, they don’t make sense for the health of our planet either.
Biodegradable alternatives are the future. Yet, what positive impact do they actually have on the environment? Here are four ways in which biodegradable straws truly make a difference.
This topic has been coming up about biodegradability and we want to offer some information on it.
It is important for all of us to understand what we are being sold.
Firstly, though, let’s clarify what we mean by biodegradable. In an increasingly eco-conscious world, it’s a term we hear a lot. However, with more and more products carrying that label, it’s important that we know what we are talking about.
When materials biodegrade, they break down into ever smaller pieces once they’ve been thrown away. All materials do this, even plastics, which break down into what we call microplastics – i.e. plastic particles smaller than 5mm. As such, it’s not a very precise term. However, we call biodegradable those products that decompose into organic material with the help of bacteria – and without leaving toxins behind.
Biodegradable alternatives to plastic straws include products made from organic materials such as straw, pasta, bamboo, or paper. These break down without leaving a trace in a timescale sometimes as short as weeks.
However, businesses should always be aware of precisely what they are buying. Straws made of polylactic acid, or PLA, a type of organic plastic, are often branded as biodegradable. However, this isn’t strictly true. For these materials to degrade, special conditions and technologies are required. In the ocean, they have not been found to degrade at all over a year.
Disposable plastic straws are no longer a viable option. With research showing that consumers are more receptive to products that are legitimately sustainable, they don’t make business sense. Yet, given the environmental impact of plastic straws, they don’t make sense for the health of our planet either.
Biodegradable alternatives are the future. Yet, what positive impact do they actually have on the environment? Here are four ways in which biodegradable straws truly make a difference.
Unlike conventional plastics, our straws don’t need hundreds of years to decompose. Unlike other ‘earth-friendly plastics’ that still take decades to decompose, Pura Vida Bioplastic straws take mere months. Reach out to us today for a free quote