Materials [stuff]

[rebeccmeister]

Two other rather random things bouncing around in my head:

1. The other day I read a news story about a speculative proposal for my community in New York that would involve building a factory to make bricks out of dredging waste. There are of course a lot of questions and concerns, particularly around pollution production, and the idea could fizzle out, but honestly I love it. Shit bricks, folks. Interestingly it sounds like heating the dredging waste to the high temperatures needed to produce bricks could either break down or fully immobilize the PCBs and PFAS in the waste. I would just have to hope that such a factory would have the appropriate air scrubbers (being fully aware that there must be legal regulations in place to actually make this happen). This is especially a big deal because there's another factory in the community already that has been burning waste material that is causing it to release these kinds of compounds into the air - a worse fate than just burying that dredging or other waste "somewhere."

Anyway, I love the proposal from the standpoint that it would take unwanted waste material and turn it into building material. I've already said a lot recently about trees, anyway.

2. After everything I wrote about Western redcedar, I got really curious about how the bark is harvested, processed, and used to make baskets.

Well, it turns out that the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska produced a whole series about Tsimshian basket weaving in 2019! Here's a link to the first in the series:

https://youtu.be/YrFOFxftByQ?si=KcHUDHrkFOK0-qjA

Now I'm curious about the long-term consequences for the trees from which the bark is harvested. I could imagine the trees continuing to be basically okay, because the harvesting doesn't completely girdle them, although the harvest looks to be a one-time thing for each tree. I'm fine with that, and it really helps me to understand why the cedar baskets and weaving I've seen offered for sale are as expensive as they are. They SHOULD be that expensive. I actually started to watch the 5th or so in this series first, which reiterates the importance of walking through the forest with deep respect; I think part of that respect comes from a recognition that the resources in the forest need to be protected.

I also loved hearing the master weaver featured in the beginning film talk about her realization after going to a basketry conference, that people across the entire globe all weave.

I don't personally plan to take up basket weaving at this time (hello, too many other hobbies!) but I definitely want to keep learning about it. Maybe more about local materials in New York, now that I have a better understanding of some of the local materials along the Northwest Coast.

Comments

[twoeleven]

Interestingly it sounds like heating the dredging waste to the high temperatures needed to produce bricks could either break down or fully immobilize the PCBs and PFAS in the waste. I would just have to hope that such a factory would have the appropriate air scrubbers (being fully aware that there must be legal regulations in place to actually make this happen).

Have some comments that need the stars and daggers of outrageous caveat:

1) Depending on what the dredged-up goo is made from, it should break down at least some of the PCBs (etc). Alumina and to a lesser extent, aluminates, are pretty good reactants/catalysts for a bunch of reactions; silica/silicates even a little bit. I'd imagine oxidative ring opening of PCBs, like the biochemical reaction, leaving a pair of carboxylate ends, which will then further oxidize. Fluorocompounds should react directly with alumina/aluminates at high temperatures, turning it into cryolite, an unusual aluminum ore.

2) Getting licenses to burn (etc) haloorganics is non-trivial, since they make a real mess if the process is screwed up. A former employer had an incinerator that was licensed for all sorts of waste except haloorganics and fancy metals. It ran on either compressed oxygen or LOX, but I can't remember which.

Fluorocompounds are more typically recovered, since some of them can donate fluorine to other compounds (they're relatively expensive, though not like platinum-group elements).

3) I'd be cautious about using anything with as uncertain a composition as river-bottom muck as a structural material. The Pedia of Wikitude says it's been tried, though.

4) Cinderblocks are partially waste-to-bricks. A few other materials have been proposed for that as well, e.g. "red mud", alkaline, iron-rich goo left over from bauxite refining. But cleaning up waste for reuse is often expensive; if it was cheap, somebody would be using it already.

Now I'm curious about the long-term consequences for the trees from which the bark is harvested. I could imagine the trees continuing to be basically okay, because the harvesting doesn't completely girdle them, although the harvest looks to be a one-time thing for each tree.

A brief online search told me... very little.¹ :) But to judge from other useful-bark species in a broader search, the trees will grow more slowly. The locals also cut planks from living trees, which seems to me would be more damaging to them. But I suppose if your only tool is a really fancy hardwood tree, everything looks like it's made of wood.

1: I found a paper with an abstract that suggested it might be useful, but the authors couldn't stop themselves from referring to Europeans as "colonizers" and "colonialists". So, I decided that they were too blinded by their biases to be trusted and tossed it in the circular bit bucket.

[rebeccmeister]

Part I:

Thanks for going further with the speculative industrial chemistry! I *do* think the whole proposal is still highly speculative, so I've been leaving the details up to the people who think they might pursue the speculation. :^)

Part II:

Thanks for asking the search engines for me! Kinda interesting to know it's hard to find information.

[twoeleven]

Thanks for asking the search engines for me! Kinda interesting to know it's hard to find information.

Bark harvesting is an unusual way of getting useful stuff from trees, or plants in general. Usually, we want the seeds, fruits, or whole plants (or big parts of them, from spinach leaves to lumber). Pulling off bark is pretty rare: cinnamon, cork, and a few other oddments are all that's commonly debarked.

So, there's a couple of papers on those trees. But redceder in particular? There's so few uses for the bark that there's little more information than "the natives do this" or "we see plenty of trees with strips of bark removed/slabs removed for planks in these sorts of environments" ("culturally modified" seems to be the accepted jargon), but nothing on how this affects their growth.

[rebeccmeister]

Hmm, I think "unusual" might be in the eye of the beholder.

I did find a little more on birch bark harvesting: https://folk.school/classes/tutorials/harvesting-birch-bark/

But very brief additional searching indicates that Western redcedar bark does *not* grow back, so this is factored in by people engaging in traditional bark-harvesting and weaving practices, with what remains of the tree population - e.g. harvest away from trails, etc. (typically harvested from trees that are 100+ years old based on what I've seen for descriptions of good trees to harvest from).

So I suppose my curiosity is now satisfied for the time being.

[rebeccmeister]

Except also here's a video on harvesting the bark from trees in the UK, where redcedar is all plantation-grown:

https://youtu.be/VNoNkyV_gA4?si=DoVMnHffhIvRFgEG

[ivy]

The Suquamish Museum out here has classes on cedar basket weaving, if you ever did want to try it. And I can show you some trees that are well harvested, and one that was poorly harvested. :/

[rebeccmeister]

Aw man! That one is like right after I'm heading to California, boo!

I've actually found someone in New York who teaches a year-long wild basketry course (meets once a month for 8 months). If I wind up wanting to actually do some basket weaving, I think I want to sign up for her course, because along with learning harvesting, processing, and weaving techniques, it would help me learn plants and trees of the northeastern US better. I'm enjoying learning about the techniques out here, but I don't have a clear picture at this point of how I would include basketmaking in my list of too-many hobbies. :^)

I would love to see at least photos of trees that are well harvested vs. poorly harvested!

[ivy]

Okay! I will try to remember/feel free to remind me when I get back from Florida, there's both a short walk from my house. (Hazel and I pass them on one of our two regular dog walk routes.)

I totally see the appeal of learning the plants near you; I had to do the reverse when moving to Seattle from the mid-Atlantic. I was surprised by how many I kinda got grandfathered in from learning about Irish trees, but those are as often "plants that thrive in each other's climates" as they are "natives of both places". I remain delighted by hazels and hawthorns in both places, though -- allegedly we had them in Maryland and Virginia, but I almost never saw them without going to the Arboretum in DC.

[rebeccmeister]

Heh, there's exactly zero rush to remember to take photos. :^)

I'm a little sad that my knowledge of PNW plants/trees has really slipped. But I also know that familiarity with the plants around me helps me develop a sense of connection to a place (see, especially: Arizona). I haven't quite had the attention or bandwidth for northeastern plants, but wild basketry seems like a fantastic way to develop a connection!

Still: gotta be realistic about projects and hobbies these days (she says, while continuing to work obsessively on the boat).