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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The waste problem:</span>
The problem is that you have to think of environmental issues a little more holistically than that.
-Incineration/pyrolysis produces CO2 (and other pollutants if not done properly)
-Making them out of paper produces methane when they biodegrade, which is worse than CO2 produced by combustion.
Making them out of plastic and then burying it on the other hand, that's actually trapping that carbon in the earth. OK so it takes a bigger hole to put them in than degradeable materials, but the UK isn't short of holes in the ground at the moment.
But if you looked at the same problem in Norway you would reach the opposite conclusion.
-low carbon electricity makes washing nappies much better for the environment
-there are very few options for landfill, and the geography makes transporting waste expensive
IMO, and maybe this is just because I'm 30 something and surrounded by people with babies, but nappies always struck me as an ideal waste stream for collection with food waste to be fed to an anaerobic digester.
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The actually making usable products problem:</span>
You cant make a paper wet wipe for the same reason you can't make a paper coffee cup, and a paper nappy. It's not a suitable material for holding liquids! Any material that could be disllved and shredded by the action of flushing a toilet isn't going to contain your latte or baby poo. I'm sure alternatives exist (could you make a nappy from coir?) but the problem wit those is once you've sold them to the middle class environmentally conscious market, you've probably run out of coir. Paper and plastic on the other hand are cheap almost limitless in their supply.
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Water Wipes are 99% water and 1% fruit extract. They feel identical to other ‘plastic’ wipes, but I’m not convinced they’d fare any better if flushed frankly.
We just need someone to invent a home incinerator to turn the burning of old people into energy and it’s double bubble.
We could also process them into food...
Recently I read of an amazing biodegradable replacement for plastics, made from cellulose. It readily breaks down in landfill, etc, just like plants, which also consist of cellulose. I’ve even thought of a name for it, it could be called Cellophane. Oh, wait...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane
cleaning hands before a picnic
Where's the rolley-eyes emoji wotsit. People have survived millions of years of eating with their unwashed hands before the invention of the wet-wipe.
The heru system isn’t incineration, its a small batch low temperature pyrolysis plant, that is still going through testing.
True, but it's still energy recovery from waste, which places it near the bottom of the hierarchy.
Pedant mode on...
People have survived millions of years of eating with their unwashed hands before the invention of the wet-wipe.
I agree that using a wet wipe to clean hands pre-picnic could be avoided, however, average life spans of early humans being around 35 years doesn't necessarily mean I want to copy their habits just because enough of them survived to create modern society!
The same goes for "People have survived for millions of years living in caves and mud huts before the invention of modern housing". I'd still rather sleep in a modern house!
Alright, people managed to have picnics before the invention of wet-wipes (or, for that matter, effing alcohol hand gel)