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Upcycled plastic can be turned into soap, researchers find
(scrippsnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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@NocturnalMorning @number6 Well, chemistry being what it is, if you turn it into soap it's not a plastic anymore, it's a soap.
Neither a plastic nor a soap are strictly defined categories, but still,
I find it hard to believe there are zero plastics left after the process. I'd like to see the paper on the process. Always appreciate condescending comments though. So, thanks for that.
Well they literally say there's none left. Their comment wasn't condescending. You kind of just asked a dumb question.
Not a dumb question at all. It's completely reasonable to want to know if there will be microplastics left over in the process.
@NocturnalMorning I mean, a lot of people have genuinely no idea what a plastic or a soap is, but they're both hard to define and explain in 500 characters, so I'm forced into "they're different and chemistry fundamentally changes things."
Given the general soap vs plastic chemical property list, it should be fairly easy to do a clean-up once you've got your polar component onto your soap. Some kind of oil-water extraction should work great. It all depends heavily on specifics, of course.