Plastic + Sunlight = Promotion to obscurity

So the plastic ring experiment is apparently quite popular. It raised my blog traffic profile from “total, abject, outer ring of the galaxy obscurity” to “pretty damn obscure.” Thanks guys!

Here is the progress to-date. This photo was taken at about 7:30 pm, today, July 16th – the outdoor rings were deployed on July 13 around 9:00 am. I clarify thanks to questions raised by Commenter Matt.

rings7-16.jpg

Also, to appease my own inklings of invalidity, I’ve taken the indoor array to the outdoor array for photo-time. I figure that the momentary exposure to the outdoors will be outweighed by the ability to control for differences in:

  • lighting
  • focus
  • distance

What it won’t account for, of course, is the original state of the rings. And when I look back at the first photo, the outdoor rings were a little worse-for-wear to begin with. I may wind up focusing on a part of the array for more granular comparisons. Like – if I focused on the big handle tab on the outside of this photo. We’ll see where we wind up.

The most notable differences are the changes in the paper bag under exposure to the outdoors. For the record, I did use two swaths of the same bag for the backing.

But really, I do have a job. And I work quite hard at it. And I have a freelance career, and a family, and a house that I clean myself, and a number of relations and friends that I am in regular contact with on the phone and via e-mail. Which isn’t to say that I don’t sometimes prefer obsessing about something like this.

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3 Responses to “Plastic + Sunlight = Promotion to obscurity”

  1. Congratulations on your newfound obscurity…

  2. The ones on the left do look significantly worse.

    To make the whole thing quantifiable in some way, I found a site from the Australian Government which claims that:

    “At least 16 US states-including Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island – have passed laws requiring six-pack holders be biodegradable (these are marked by a small diamond between the rings). Pepsi for example, has a policy to purchase only photodegradable plastic sixpack rings. It should be noted that photodegradable plastics are not a complete solution in themselves as they require 6-8 weeks of sunlight to degrade and will not degrade if buried.” (Emphasis mine)

    This may end up being a long experiment!

  3. Six to eight weeks? Then I hereby reserve the right to lose interest.

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