{"id":72804,"date":"2020-03-18T07:20:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T06:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=72804"},"modified":"2020-03-14T07:44:15","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T06:44:15","slug":"making-straws-that-dont-suck-for-the-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/making-straws-that-dont-suck-for-the-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Making straws that don\u2019t suck for the environment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cellulose_straws\"
Members of the research groups of professors van de Ven and Lumb at the first social gathering worldwide in which Cellophax straws are used. TreeMaTech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the federal ban of single-use plastics planned for this year, the demand for alternatives to everyday plastic products, such as straws, is set to increase. TreeMaTech, a startup company born through a collaboration between chemistry professors from McGill and Lakehead University, is betting on cellulose for making drinking straws that don\u2019t suck for the environment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The company, founded by Theo van de Ven and Jean-Philip Lumb, professors in McGill\u2019s Department of Chemistry, and Lakehead University\u2019s Md Nur Alam, has recently developed a prototype drinking straw made from Cellophax, a \u201cplastic-like material made from cellulose, the major component of trees and plants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur estimate is that Canadians throw out about a billion straws every year,\u201d says Van de Ven. \u201cWith plastic drinking straws being such a big issue, we were excited when we realized that we could easily make them out of cellulose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Straws keep their shape<\/h3>\n

Van de Ven says the straws, which can be easily produced from a viscous cellulose solution obtained from a proprietary process developed by the founders, look and feel like regular plastic straws, making them more likely to be adopted as a replacement than other alternatives already on the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody I speak with seems to hate paper straws; they get soggy and cave in on themselves,\u201d he told the Reporter. \u201cOur straws keep their shape once the get wet, you could even use them for a hot drink, they\u2019re very stable.\u201d<\/p>\n

More importantly, they\u2019re made from a renewable and recyclable resource.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce they\u2019re used, we can redissolve them in an alkaline solution to make new straws or use the material to make other cellulose-based products.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, kraft pulp \u2013 usually used to make office and tissue paper \u2013 is used as the source material for TreeMaTech\u2019s products, but van de Ven said it should be easy enough to extract cellulose from sawdust or shredded paper, an approach that would significantly cut production costs.<\/p>\n

Bright future for cellulose-based products<\/h3>\n

Though TreeMaTech is focusing on drinking straws as a first step, the company plans to apply their technology to replacing a number of single-use plastics, such as bottles, bags and textiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cCellulose textiles already exist, but the processes used to make and dye them are very toxic and come with a significant environmental footprint,\u201d van de Ven explains. \u201cThe process we\u2019ve developed doesn\u2019t require harmful chemicals so it\u2019s very promising.<\/p>\n

TreeMaTech has purchased a spinneret to make their cellulose fibres into yarn to be woven into fabrics in order to test the material properties of the product.<\/p>\n

Recently, the startup has also made headway in the lab by producing \u201cultra-thin and ultra-strong\u201d recyclable cellulose films.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe plastic market is quite large, so our technology shows great potential. It\u2019s quite exciting,\u201d says van de Ven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the federal ban of single-use plastics planned for this year, the demand for alternatives to everyday plastic products, such as straws, is set to increase. TreeMaTech, a startup company born through a collaboration between chemistry professors from McGill and Lakehead University, is betting on cellulose for making drinking straws that don\u2019t suck for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[6162,12679,15187],"supplier":[16827,3805,16828],"class_list":["post-72804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-cellulose","tag-recyclability","tag-straws","supplier-lakehead-university","supplier-mcgill-university-in-montreal","supplier-treematech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72804"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=72804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}