> unlike glass, it bends or splinters instead of shattering.
That sounds incredibly dangerous. Shattering is a safety feature of modern glass, so you don't have huge jagged chunks to cut an artery if you break it.
That sounds incredibly dangerous. Shattering is a safety feature of modern glass, so you don't have huge jagged chunks to cut an artery if you break it.
https://www.karseyglass.com/single-post/2019/06/24/Tempered-...
Of course if the final result has remotely similar properties to balsa it would also mean that you could just about break it with a hard enough sneeze. Balsa's a very soft wood.
(Though now that I look at the actual abstract it's probably stronger than the chunks of balsa wood I learnt to carve as a kid: "high toughness (3.03 MJ m-3) that is 3 orders of magnitude higher than standard glass (0.003 MJ m-3)" - so maybe you could indeed do some serious damage with shards of clear balsa.)
> Could looking through trees be the view to a greener future?
No. The opposite. It means more harvesting of the trees to yield the raw materials that is wood to produce such a glass.
Leaving aside the pollution of the rivers and the land and the air over the years, replacing a forest like the Amazon (example) and the ecosystem within cannot be measured in terms dollar incentives to an industry.
Sustainable harvesting is much like clean coal. The math doesn't actually work, but the advocacy sure does. ;-)
Responsible wood farming is quite possible, and it can be forced by strong regulation with the ability to enforce some rules and stop imports of things not meeting rules.
Wood comes from a place where a forest (like Amazon) once stood.
> …can be forced by strong regulation with the ability to enforce some rules and stop imports of things not meeting.
I doubt that any of the above is possible. Businesses can always weasel their way out and do what they need to do to make money.
CITES has been effective at sustaining forests through maintaining their economic value while reducing production to sustainable levels. Shannon Rogers podcast on the lumber industry has several episodes dedicated to this if you want to learn more.
Glass is made from sand - and we have a finite supply. It is definitely not a renewable resource. This isn't getting into the additives and stuff, just the base material (easier to compare).