
Mango leaves: Indian scientists' solution to a $2.5T global shipping problem - rubayeet
https://qz.com/india/1673557/indian-scientists-use-mango-leaf-to-prevent-ships-from-rusting/
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ericpauley
This article is like a game of telephone. The cited study finds that _all_
corrosion of all types worldwide is a 2.5T problem. Shipping is a small
fraction of that. Hard to trust the article after such a trivially false
statement in the title.

Notably, the economic impact of the entire shipping industry is under 500B
[1], which ought to cast doubt over the whole article.

[1] [http://www.worldshipping.org/benefits-of-liner-
shipping/glob...](http://www.worldshipping.org/benefits-of-liner-
shipping/global-economic-engine)

Also @dang the article should link to the original at
[https://www.scidev.net/asia-pacific/r-d/news/mango-leaf-
extr...](https://www.scidev.net/asia-pacific/r-d/news/mango-leaf-extract-can-
stop-ships-from-rusting.html)

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throwawaycert
Those numbers you found are only for liner shipping, not all shipping.

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ErikVandeWater
The total world GDP is around 80 trillion. A 2.5 trillion dollar problem is
about 3% of total GDP. That is an astronomical amount of rust!

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Blahah
In the context of a thread about the precision of quantitative language, I
feel obligated to raise an eyebrow (and type a comment about the raising of
said eyebrow) at your use of "astronomical".

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perl4ever
The number of stars in the Milky Way is supposedly about 250 billion, so
anything in the trillions is well qualified to be considered an astronomical
number.

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dzhiurgis
I'm not convinced corrosion under water is any problem at all. Typically
problem is fouling from marine growth. That's what toxic anti-fouling paint is
for.

Corrosion under water can't really happen as not enough oxygen is there. Over
the waterline (and across the ship) - it's different story.

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6nf
Also we use sacrificial anodes that are designed to rust away and be easily
replaced.

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gbraad
It is lab-tested and nothing beyond this

"""“What has been developed is a dip-coated method—we do not know the strength
of this coating and its ability to resist wear and tear in real conditions
outside the laboratory, or the commercial viability of the product,” Gosvami
says."""

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spodek
I have another solution: stop shipping so much junk around the world.

Watch the Story of Stuff [https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-
stuff](https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff), the True Cost
[http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-cost](http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-true-
cost), and films like them and it's hard not to conclude that reducing the
amount of shipping by 75% or so would improve everyone's lives and Earth's
capacity to support life and human society. Some industries would have to
adjust -- mainly ones filling landfills and producing greenhouse gases.

The Story of Stuff site has the details, but something like 99% of stuff
American's buy ends up in landfills within a year. Go to Craig's List free
stuff and you'll see tons of stuff people can't give away every day. Just the
tip of the iceberg.

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sjwright
You can't "reduce the amount of shipping" by fiat. The best you can do is
price the externalities into products we buy—which is a good idea and we
should be doing a lot more of that—but that won't change the fact that (a)
it'll always be cheaper to make some stuff elsewhere and (b) it's often
impossible to make some stuff closer to you.

Good luck making (not just assembling) smartphones in Belgium or Iowa.

What you're really asking for is to make consumer goods so dramatically more
expensive that repairs become economically competitive and casual disposal
becomes economically untenable. Even then if you want to "fix" the problem,
you would also fix the cost of housing, education and healthcare so that
disposable consumer goods command greater portion of people's income.

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Confusion

      “so far it has been tested only in simulated laboratory 
      conditions rather than in actual use”
    

As with the weekly ‘battery breakthrough’: wake me when it turns out to work
in practice and production can be scaled.

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lunias
These articles... lemme try one.

Riding to Alpha Centauri on a Pineapple: Scientists' find key inside beloved
fruit; eternal life?

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choonway
question: are there enough mango leaves in India to extract the rust
inhibiting compounds?

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steele
y'all haters are killjoys too

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throwaway3627
Fixing iron oxidation is great, my old VW would appreciate it, but I don't see
how it helps much... and I'm sure marine coatings have a long history and a
lot of technology invested. Wouldn't a systematically-better approach be to do
as much local-to-customer, JIT manufacturing and stop shipping _finished_
goods all over the world? If not just for climate-change but for reduced time-
to-customer? (Caveat: Still must ship materials and specialized/complex goods
that aren't available locally.)

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peterburkimsher
Local manufacturing works great for some industries, such as band T-shirts. I
know from chatting to Anberlin after their show in Sydney that they get
T-shirts printed in each country they tour in.

It simply wouldn't work for electronics. A company could lose its brand
recognition just because of bad PR from an incompetent assembly plant in one
region. Customers wouldn't be able to tell the difference between regional
variants, and outrage on the Internet would spread worldwide. It's just a
whole lot safer to keep it centralised with proper quality controls.

