The catastrophic damage to nature from rubbish every day brings us closer to the hour of reckoning for carelessness. The most common type of rubbish has long been plastic food packaging. Environmentalists and scientists are sounding the alarm and talking about the need to replace cheap and accessible plastic. A solution to the problem has been found by specialists from the University of Pennsylvania in the form of bags made of modified paper.
Ordinary paper is still used to make eco-packages today. But such packaging is not very strong, which makes it impossible to reuse. The durability of paper bags decreases even more when they get wet. The alternative developed by American scientists allows us to get away from all these disadvantages: the new bags, although being paper, are resistant to moisture, have a strength comparable to plastic, and meet the requirements of environmental friendliness, allowing multiple use.
The key to these properties is the torrefaction process. This involves slowly heating the paper in an oxygen-deficient environment to significantly increase its wet tensile strength. After 40 minutes of firing at a temperature of 200 degrees Celsius, scientists recorded a 1.533 per cent increase in tensile strength.
