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I’m so happy we’re transitioning away from using synthetic processes to create so many inferior synthetic compounds, and transitioning towards using synthetic processes to create tried and tested compounds we’ve been using and loving for millennia.
Synthetic isn’t inherently bad just because some synthetic things are bad. Until we get more information on this thing, your snark is entirely baseless
I don’t think meant that as snark at all tbh. They’re saying they like that we’re using synthetic processes to make biodegradable, useful, and known-safe materials in a more efficient way, as compared to making the usual synthetic cotton-alternative materials that have a lot of downsides by comparison (lack of biodegradability, poor breathability, microplastic pollution, etc). I think you two actually agree probably? Lots of synthetic things are bad or flawed, and it’s nice to see this synthetic thing that is probably good.
Ah fair, apologies if I misread the tone
Common Beehaw W for good natured communications
Synthetic fibres are cool stuff, no doubt, but they also contribute to our whole microplastics problem, which isn’t that cool, to be honest.
Oh I totally agree about that, we need to move away from the ubiquitous use of plastics that don’t biodegrade in relatively short order
we can make so many things from fermentation now, its unreal. We can ferment plastics now.
This article is very thin on the details. Why would anyone want to cultivate a plant in the lab that grows perfectly well in fields across multiple climate zones?
The final product is dried and harvested, with minimized water, land and energy use, Galy says.
That’s why. Cotton is notoriously bad in all of those categories. To that I would add the most cotton grown commercially is paired with a lot of pesticides as well.
From an EU briefing on textiles and the environment:
Cotton accounts for 24 % of global fibre production, according to Textile Exchange. It can be problematic because it can require huge quantities of land, water, fertilisers and pesticides and cannot easily be recycled into virgin fibre. However, the environmental impacts of organic cotton can be reduced drastically compared with conventional cotton, as it uses less water and pollutes less.
The huge quantities of land required should absolutely not be underestimated as a climate problem. If we’re going to survive this we absolutely need to give land back to nature at a massive scale, and the easiest (humanely tolerable) way of achieving this is to produce the same goods at a much lesser surface area. Lab cotton could, hopefully, be efficiently grown in a high rise building with a minimal physical footprint.
Would be interesting to see how easily vacant office space can be converted to vertical farming, since developers seem insistent that it can’t be turned into residential space for various reasons. There’s rather a lot of it in the wake of work-from-home and the AI revolution.
You could imagine a feature where cities are farms and office workers live in the country side. That’s fascinating.
To make the Galy cotton, a team collects samples from a plant and harvests its cells. The cells are grown in bioreactor or fermentation vessels in a cell culture process similar to beer brewing. The final product is dried and harvested, with minimized water, land and energy use, Galy says.
Maybe I just misread the sentence. But the full quote seems deliberately obtuse to me. They don’t explicitly say that they need less water than traditional farming.
Cotton is one of the worst things to grow in 99% of the world yet we do it as a cash crop.
In Australia cotton farmers are turning rivers dry, and if you know Australia we don’t have much water to begin with.
the worlds fourth largest lake was almost entirely drained by cotton cultivation
I’m not up to speed on the environmental impact of cotton farming, but it would be pretty cool if this technology could be applied to stuff like the oil palm, which only grows in tropical areas.
Thank good. Now I can stop worrying about all that suffering cotton.
id worry more about how the worlds fourth-largest lake
has been almost entirely drained, and turned into a toxic desert.
because of cotton cultivation
Theres a few metrics that are the only thing that matters here, and this doesnt have any of them. Thorough comparisons of water usage, carbon footprint, and land usage. A lab has a lot of extra things that go into its impact compared to plants just growing in soil. Its a whole ass building for one. Thats a lot of impact in construction and maintenance. Thats air conditioning and plumbing for employee needs, electricity needs, roads and parking lots, all of this is water and emissions impact. Dont forget that a plant growing is itself sequestering carbon, if this is less plant material than conventional growing, thats another impact. Ive got a whirlwind of concerns for this
Interesting, but kind of has the ‘y tho?’ factor to it. Others note the land and water use issue vut it seems there are a lot of other crops that would be bigger targets on those fronts. Lab meats, now that I can see a big reason for, the lack of need for slaughter and the amouny of feed and space needed for beef production is massive for what we get out of it.
This is quite a bit easier to accomplish than meat (as a product people want to consume). This is genetically modified yeast that produces cotton fibers. The same thing is done to produce insulin, and many other products.
Meat is far more complex though. It’s not super difficult to grow meat, but it is in a form that resembles meat people expect and want. You can’t just grow muscle. You need to have the correct ratio of fats, and not just the correct ratio, but it should be in the meat in an expected way, not just a seperate layer on top. It’s complicated. It will be a huge benefit when it’s available, but there are probably dozens of companies already working on it.
