Unfortunately it's not, to protected the moisture level it has to be really well protected so it doesn't rot... Unfortunate side effect of both the dairy and meat industry
Planned obsolescence. The people who made the whacky machine probably also sell the wrap compatible with it. The faster they use it, the more often they have to buy it.
I'm not saying I don't trust science to find the minimum amount, I'm saying I don't trust capitalism to use science when ignoring it is more profitable.
It feels like a person is holding a button to make it go 'round until they estimate that it's done. If that's the case, I really don't trust the science.
I believe Kuhn do make wrap, but so do many other companies who's wrap you can use instead, such as Silotite, which is what the person in the video is using.
You'll see the guy let's the bale get about 3 total rotations on the machine, you can manage with 2, but then you start to have a lot of issues of the wrap tearing during transport
It did feel about 6 wraps too many, however that may be the minimal required to hold it together and stack and stay sealed . The cost of a silo these days can be pretty high too built to today’s standards. Build it any less, may be subject to lawsuits. May not be as feasible. If one batch/bail fails here not a whole silo of materials lost at least. With a silo as well probably requires higher insurance, protection from randos showing up climbing on it getting hurt. Less waste over time from age of the silo, not having to repair wear and tear, to abandoning the silo, felling it later. Would be interesting to see price over time with both methods, not stating what I am stating is accurate or that I stated every angle/expense either… manpower, management overhead, … the list continues
Choices on individuals can have big impacts at a larger level. Like yes your hundred or so plastic straws a year aren't much but when you consider the number from a fast food industry perspective its a lot.
Carbon footprint is a scam that corporations push to put the blame on the consumer. They are responsible for very nearly all pollution and poison that is actually impactful in the environment. They could easily stop polluting but that would dig into 0.00001% of their shareholders profit. It's mostly China and india companies who can get away with it
The shareholders' profit comes from consumers buying their products. If consumers stopped buying all the products, companies would stop producing.
Everyone person who participates in the system shares some degree of responsibility.
Higher ups could be less corrupt, companies could focus on longer term, more sustainable means of making profit, voters could coordinate and vote for parties that will actually change things instead of whichever left/right figurehead they find most entertaining, consumers could buy less. 🤷
Do you guys just not leave the stuff in the cart, walk out and just put it all in the trunk or back seat after getting it to your car? I don't use bags cause it all fits snugly in my trunk.
I've worked in a few factories. One of them was a bottling plant for shampoo and similar products. The sheer amount of waste that goes out of those places is insane. Everyday, they threw out more shampoo than I will use in my entire life. And that's just what I noticed, not even plant wide. Same thing for plastic. Not even counting what would be recycled, just what they threw away. More thrown away in a day than any one person will ever use.
I have an idea! Why don't we invent a building to store hay bails inside! That way we won't have to use plastic! Let's call it a Nbra! No, wait. A Bran! No, wait. Hold on. Let's call it a Bnra! No wait....
Grass bales are often stored and fermented for feed purposes. These are being wrapped for silage. It will be stored, where it will ferment. As it ferments the liquids and gasses will cause some expansion, so you need some redundancy. You also don't want it dried all the way out like your hay, so you need it airtight. This not only helps control the fermentation process which increases nutritional value of the bale, but also allows you to store it for longer.
Ah yes, the mower up front with the baler behind. The perfect way to spend your time while your friends get their combine harvesters stuck on a rooftop.
Playing with big trucks for big kids. What's surprising about that?
6yr old me in the early 70s would have LIVED in FS, Snowrunner, Mudrunner, and BeamNG, had they existed.
Kids these days are LUCKY!
Rats can definitely eat through thin plastic though. It's just more convenient. We have had hay bails for years without plastic. EDIT -Numerous people have replied saying this is silage and not hay. My point still stands. Silage predates plastic. It's a product of convenience.
[They can even get through softer metals like aluminum sheeting, lead, copper, iron, and gold. ](https://www.earthkind.com/blog/what-surprising-things-can-a-rat-chew-through/#:~:text=They%20can%20even%20get%20through,even%20the%20hardest%20of%20woods.)
There is a non-zero risk of a massive explosion when using a silo to ferment. Whereas there is a zero risk of a massive explosion if individual bales are wrapped in plastic.
Also they are much easier to transfer & distribute.
Silo-ing requires extra work and specialized equipment to cut silage from it. Also if 1 bale get's a cut and rots, it's not the end of the world, you have more, if your silo starts to rot it's a bigger problem. Also they are tradeable so farmer can easily buy/sell them depending on their needs.
Anyways most farmers I know do both. Silo as a main silage resource, and bales to pad things out when silo runs out/is not ready yet.
In NZ, a concrete-lined bay in a small hillside filled with silage, a tarpaulin over the top and several hundred old tires to hold it down. Most farmers wrap dry hay into 600kg round bales with plastic and stack them in a heap rather than pay for a hayshed or barn. Some ag suppliers take the used wrapping for recycling.
There have been cases of exploding trousers, but not many compost bombs.
While in college in the early 90s, I did computer work for farm equipment distributor. Everyone had to sit through the vendor meetings, regardless of the department. I distinctly remember them having multiple meetings with European manufacturers who were trying to sell round baling equipment. They had done a ton of studies and discovered sealing the bale for the fermentation process upped the protein and vitamin count dramatically.
Not in all cases. There are certain types of fodder plants that are baled up wet and they need to be wrapped in plastic so they keep the water in, increasing their nutritional value. Usually they use hemp rope for hay and straw bales, because those are dried before baling.
It's not meant to hold it together but rather to ferment it. Thought seems to me there may be less wasteful, though maybe not as easy or quick, ways to ferment it.
Yeah... Working any sort of factory or warehouse job will reeeeeeally change anyone's tune on the solution being reusable grocery bags, metal straws, and buying cans over bottles.
I work live events and occasionally in a warehouse for the gear. Had a big project assembling a ton of stage cable packages for a bunch of different venues. All the plastic sheathed cable spools come wrapped in plastic, along with boxes of individually plastic wrapped plastic jacks, all plastic wrapped onto a pallet. We assemble the various cable lengths they need, put it back in boxes, and plastic wrap it back to a pallet to send it out. Just oodles and oodles of plastic that only exist to keep things organized shipping from A to B to C.
And then what happens at these venues? Pallets and pallets of plastic water bottles, plastic wrapped into 24 packs, plastic wrapped onto a pallet get broken down and used to keep the crew hydrated during setup / teardown. Or sold. Oh or maybe it's an AV call where miles of plastic tape is used to secure cables to the floor or eachother just for the one or two days the event is on. And maybe some of the gear isn't on rolling cases, so it comes plastic wrapped onto a pallet as well, and plastic wrapped again to send back to the warehouse
Yeah... Getting rid of plastic straws and grocery bags is good. But it's a drop in the ocean. Nothing is going to change without largely removing single use plastics from manufacturing and shipping.
I think it was Warren Buffet (might be misremembering) that was very pro plastic/emissions tax because these are forms of pollution where the free market doesn't properly represent the true cost of the good being purchased. The cost to produce and utilize the single use plastic is a small portion of the total life cycle "cost" of the plastic (recycling/garbage/environmental cleanup, microplastics in the water, etc.).
An upfront tax at the time of original sale would help adjust buying behaviour and create an economic incentive to at least explore alternate packaging options.
Sidenote: I think the anti-paper "save the trees" environmental messaging of the 90's/early 00's may have been a bit misguided in retrospect due to the industry pivots it resulted in. Sustainable forestry practices: very important, and worth rioting to encourage. Avoiding all paper products: simply causes a pivot to the next cheap material: plastic.
It's supposed to be airtight and keep for up to a year. If you're a farmer betting your entire business on the integrity of this wrap id be pretty generous with wrapping as well honestly.
uh these wraps are usually ldpe. Those things ARE recycled plastic bottles. And can be recycled to be plastic bottles again. PE is the stuff we are good at recycling. If we get it seperated from other plastics that is. Most of the problem of our plastic recycling is that different kinds of plastics are mixed and seperating them is not feasible but with things like plastic bottles or these wraps when they come in only with other PE it is easily done.
We used to use it and now I sell the equipment that does this kinda stuff. It's kind of like thick plastic wrap you put on food, it sticks to itself which keeps everything sealed better. Like other comments said this can be done to make silage as well as simply preserve some of the bales for later use for cattle feed. Not many people do it, they just buy it as they need it really.
I was wondering more about the material the wrap is made of. ~~Cellophane is made of plant material and biodegradable and compostable while petroleum based plastics aren't. It seems like cellophane would be a natural choice for this sort of application, but natural choices aren't always the best economical ones.~~
edit: I regret mentioning any examples that distracted from knowing what material the wrap is made from and whether the wrap is degradable or not. My apologies for the confusion and distraction.
While cello does biodegrade more naturally, the [manufacturing of cello](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/cellophane#:~:text=Cellophane%20is%20made%20from%20a,reconvert%20the%20viscose%20into%20cellulose.) involves soaking chemically dissolved plant material in a bath of sulphuric acid and sodium sulphate to make cellulose, so that probably cancels out any environmental benefits the end result might be. It’s also a more expensive product.
I’m not a chemical engineer but I am a chemist. The sulfuric acid and the sodium sulfate are perhaps the two most innocuous chemicals on the list you could’ve chosen outside of cellulose itself.
The main problems with cellophane production are threefold: 1) it’s happening at scale under the premise it can be recycled when it cannot, 2) one of the most evil companies on the face of the planet is being entrusted with proper waste management, and 3) its synthesis, like almost all other synthetic polymers, is full of petrochemicals. The fact that it comes from plant material is a distraction meant to make it look more sustainable than it is.
there may be a collection point that says "recycling" on it, but plastic films are not recycled pretty much anywhere. Plastic quality tends to degrade with each recycling (and typically fresh plastics are mixed in at each stage), and the plastics in film simply aren't usable anymore. Or more to the point, recycling them isn't economically viable.
Plastic recycling is a scam. None of it is actually recycled. They probably sell it to some other country where they dump it in the ocean or bury it next to some ecologically sensitive spot for maximum damage.
We actually have to show the evidence that we delivered it every year. And we also pay a climate tax on every roll of plastic we buy.
Its stupid expensive and we dont waste it, but with our varying weather changes we really just need do it when we can.
This is the difference between a hay bale and a silage bale. The wrap allows for it to ferment and become silage, which keeps nutrients and moisture at much higher levels than dry hay can achieve.
Fermentation causes heat, which can cause a fire. A whole ass silo on fire would be very bad. Hay shouldn't be stacked while it's still wet for the same reason.
There are driving silos as well. 2 walls of concrete, put the grass inbetween, compress it and then seal it with a large plastic cover. Iirc that one could be reusable.
But silage seems to be prone to mold, so the larger the portions are, there more of the cattle food is at risk. The piles are opened at one end and needs to be emptied at a constant rate to prevent mold at the surface area.
These bales are a convenient sweet spot for farmers. Easy to transport around, little risk, like one spoiled bale doesn't mean your cattle can't be fed in winter.
But man, oil and plastic is still too cheap if we can do shit like that. OTOH i don't wanna know how cattle farmers would bitch and moan and increase beef prices if we restrict bale wrapping.
From own experience, its that much to protect the haybales from molds spreading inside. We have cats that made tiny cuts with their claws inside the plastic and we had to throw like 4 haybales away.
Serious answer. Giant pits. Look up silage pits.
It's a fermenting process to preserve the grass. It stays a lot wetter than hay and can be easier to make in wetter climates. And can hold onto more nutrients than hay depending on the process.
Silos are expensive.
Some old school places use pits.
Bales are the most convenient on small to mid sized farms as you can store and move it without much fuss.
Well, technically it's not hay. Unless the definitions in English are different.
Hay is dried grass. This is achieved by leaving it on the sun in the field for up to several days and turning it over a couple times until it's almost completely dry. (or hanging it on beams in a special structure made for drying grass). You can see it's dry by its very washed out green color, looking almost gray. Hay is then stored loose in large compartments or in bales with string (no wrap).
What is shown above looks like grass that still has moisture and is being wrapped for silage. By wrapping it air & water tight while it still has moisture inside, it ferments and becomes silage. It's much more nutritional feed compared to hay and makes it smell really nice.
Air & water.
It needs to be airtight so it can ferment and exposure to outside will make it mold. Scratch one tiny hole into it and you can probably throw half of bale away.
I wonder why our planet is getting destroyed, could it be using 8x the plastic wrap you need for a single bale of hay? We need to force people to reuse plastic that's left over, this shit is kinda ridiculous.
So it's not retail packaging for the bail of hay, they wrap it to ferment the hay into silage for animal feed, it has to be wrapped like this to make it airtight, or it will go bad.
Well professor for the last thousand years they didn't have large scale cattle farms that couldn't survive without it, don't like it make sure you aren't eating any beef or consuming any dairy
For the last thousand years, 99 out of 100 were constantly working on fields and still barely produced enough to not starve to death. If you are ok to enjoy your current office life when a single farmer feeds 100 people, you would have to accept that that productivity is not done by magic but by resources used.
Man that's so efficient. At my grandparents farm we used to have to lift each bale up on the front loader and put the bag on and then tie it closed once it had been placed on the big bale pyramid.
If you're thinking this is a waste of plastic wait until you see stuff that's delivered on pallets.
I've worked events for a while now and often we palletise stock off the main trailer, get the telehandler to move it to the relevant bar and then another team unwraps and bins the plastic pallet wrap.
Probably in use for 5 minutes or so
Reminds me of the grocery store:
Plastic bag for tomato’s
Plastic bag for garlic
Plastic bag for potatoes
Meat
Seafood
Chicken
Broccoli
Celery
Hot dogs
Corn
Frozen French fries
Inside bag of cereal
Deli Cheese
Deli Turkey
Plastic container for: sour cream, cream, milk, juice etc.
BUT WE CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT BC WE CHARGE YOU TO BUY YOUR OWN BAGS TO REUSE!!!!!
Just a money grab disguised as environmental care!
Well, there goes all the plastic straws i have not used last year.
[удалено]
And the wrapping isn't even necessary. Most bales are just tied with string!
I think it’s in that stuff so that it ferments/turns into cow food of some sort. Edit: silage
Yes this is silage and it will spoil if not water tight
Yes, cheese for cows
Silage needs to be water tight, if it spoils the farmer has a huge problem on their hands
I too, am mortified. I understand if it needs to be thick enough, but that felt like overkill.
Unfortunately it's not, to protected the moisture level it has to be really well protected so it doesn't rot... Unfortunate side effect of both the dairy and meat industry
It's not, plastic wraps expensive, no-one's using extra just for the craic of it
Planned obsolescence. The people who made the whacky machine probably also sell the wrap compatible with it. The faster they use it, the more often they have to buy it. I'm not saying I don't trust science to find the minimum amount, I'm saying I don't trust capitalism to use science when ignoring it is more profitable. It feels like a person is holding a button to make it go 'round until they estimate that it's done. If that's the case, I really don't trust the science.
I believe Kuhn do make wrap, but so do many other companies who's wrap you can use instead, such as Silotite, which is what the person in the video is using. You'll see the guy let's the bale get about 3 total rotations on the machine, you can manage with 2, but then you start to have a lot of issues of the wrap tearing during transport
It did feel about 6 wraps too many, however that may be the minimal required to hold it together and stack and stay sealed . The cost of a silo these days can be pretty high too built to today’s standards. Build it any less, may be subject to lawsuits. May not be as feasible. If one batch/bail fails here not a whole silo of materials lost at least. With a silo as well probably requires higher insurance, protection from randos showing up climbing on it getting hurt. Less waste over time from age of the silo, not having to repair wear and tear, to abandoning the silo, felling it later. Would be interesting to see price over time with both methods, not stating what I am stating is accurate or that I stated every angle/expense either… manpower, management overhead, … the list continues
Ahaha 🤣 very eco friendly of yours … not of them
It is not like we normal people can do anything by saving a little bit of water when brushing or whatever. We still should do it tho.
Choices on individuals can have big impacts at a larger level. Like yes your hundred or so plastic straws a year aren't much but when you consider the number from a fast food industry perspective its a lot.
The biggest impact you can have is voting.
Carbon footprint is a scam that corporations push to put the blame on the consumer. They are responsible for very nearly all pollution and poison that is actually impactful in the environment. They could easily stop polluting but that would dig into 0.00001% of their shareholders profit. It's mostly China and india companies who can get away with it
The shareholders' profit comes from consumers buying their products. If consumers stopped buying all the products, companies would stop producing. Everyone person who participates in the system shares some degree of responsibility. Higher ups could be less corrupt, companies could focus on longer term, more sustainable means of making profit, voters could coordinate and vote for parties that will actually change things instead of whichever left/right figurehead they find most entertaining, consumers could buy less. 🤷
Seems like an unnecessary amount of wrap
Me: carrying a comically large stack of groceries in my arms because I forgot my shopping bag at home and don't want to use a plastic one. Meanwhile:
Meanwhile there's me who's also always forgets his bag at home so he everytime buys a new plastic one.
Btw do you also have a bag bag at home?
Haha, we have a bag drawer atm, which is where my grocery bags usually are while I'm at the grocery store.
Then why not bring the drawer next time?
You should get yourself a Bag Hutch.
I even have a bag bag bag
Its called a meta-bag
Yup, goes on the bag doorknob.
Meanwhile there's me who collects all the plastic bags his friends get for cat poops.
Oh thank fuck I thought I was alone. I am so bad about that.
Do you guys just not leave the stuff in the cart, walk out and just put it all in the trunk or back seat after getting it to your car? I don't use bags cause it all fits snugly in my trunk.
Yeah, I do sometimes.
Farming using massive amounts of plastic (some types, anyway) and a lot just burn it all in burn pits when they are finished using it. Yay. :P
Meanwhile, the supermarket individually plastic wrap each potatos and charge me 5 times as much for it
I've worked in a few factories. One of them was a bottling plant for shampoo and similar products. The sheer amount of waste that goes out of those places is insane. Everyday, they threw out more shampoo than I will use in my entire life. And that's just what I noticed, not even plant wide. Same thing for plastic. Not even counting what would be recycled, just what they threw away. More thrown away in a day than any one person will ever use.
I never go outside without a shopping bag. I carry my keys and wallet in it, and later groceries.
I have an idea! Why don't we invent a building to store hay bails inside! That way we won't have to use plastic! Let's call it a Nbra! No, wait. A Bran! No, wait. Hold on. Let's call it a Bnra! No wait....
Far out man I felt guilty about the plastic bailing twine that wraps my hay, this amount is obscene
Grass bales are often stored and fermented for feed purposes. These are being wrapped for silage. It will be stored, where it will ferment. As it ferments the liquids and gasses will cause some expansion, so you need some redundancy. You also don't want it dried all the way out like your hay, so you need it airtight. This not only helps control the fermentation process which increases nutritional value of the bale, but also allows you to store it for longer.
I'm proud to say that I also knew this because of Farming Simulator 22
Ah yes, the mower up front with the baler behind. The perfect way to spend your time while your friends get their combine harvesters stuck on a rooftop.
Love that damn game and I never would have imagined I would
Playing with big trucks for big kids. What's surprising about that? 6yr old me in the early 70s would have LIVED in FS, Snowrunner, Mudrunner, and BeamNG, had they existed. Kids these days are LUCKY!
Micro plastics? Wouldn’t that happen from the fermentation too. Also are they reused or just dispose and hopefully in the rightful manner
The need to ferment and keep rats out
Rats can definitely eat through thin plastic though. It's just more convenient. We have had hay bails for years without plastic. EDIT -Numerous people have replied saying this is silage and not hay. My point still stands. Silage predates plastic. It's a product of convenience.
This isn’t going to be hay, it’s going to be sileage
Good thing this isn’t a hay bale then, it’s a grass bale being wrapped to be fermented into silage
They can eat through thin plastic. Thankfully this is a 3 inch barrier of solid plastic
That's not 3 inches thick lol...and even if it was, I think you're under estimating the determination and strength of rats in large numbers.
[They can even get through softer metals like aluminum sheeting, lead, copper, iron, and gold. ](https://www.earthkind.com/blog/what-surprising-things-can-a-rat-chew-through/#:~:text=They%20can%20even%20get%20through,even%20the%20hardest%20of%20woods.)
Or even a single rat. Dedicated fuckers.
The wrap is necessary for it to ferment. Read up on silage if you want to know more.
Silage predates plastic, so maybe not so much necessary as convenient.
Yeah if only there were a better way to make silage... like a silo
There is a non-zero risk of a massive explosion when using a silo to ferment. Whereas there is a zero risk of a massive explosion if individual bales are wrapped in plastic.
Also they are much easier to transfer & distribute. Silo-ing requires extra work and specialized equipment to cut silage from it. Also if 1 bale get's a cut and rots, it's not the end of the world, you have more, if your silo starts to rot it's a bigger problem. Also they are tradeable so farmer can easily buy/sell them depending on their needs. Anyways most farmers I know do both. Silo as a main silage resource, and bales to pad things out when silo runs out/is not ready yet.
Or like a hole in the ground
In NZ, a concrete-lined bay in a small hillside filled with silage, a tarpaulin over the top and several hundred old tires to hold it down. Most farmers wrap dry hay into 600kg round bales with plastic and stack them in a heap rather than pay for a hayshed or barn. Some ag suppliers take the used wrapping for recycling. There have been cases of exploding trousers, but not many compost bombs.
While in college in the early 90s, I did computer work for farm equipment distributor. Everyone had to sit through the vendor meetings, regardless of the department. I distinctly remember them having multiple meetings with European manufacturers who were trying to sell round baling equipment. They had done a ton of studies and discovered sealing the bale for the fermentation process upped the protein and vitamin count dramatically.
My first thought.
Something like hemp rope or fuck anything other than a crazy amount of plastic might be a more viable option...
Not in all cases. There are certain types of fodder plants that are baled up wet and they need to be wrapped in plastic so they keep the water in, increasing their nutritional value. Usually they use hemp rope for hay and straw bales, because those are dried before baling.
> they need to be wrapped in plastic so they keep the water in Or be put in a silo *not* made of plastic and fermented there.
It's not meant to hold it together but rather to ferment it. Thought seems to me there may be less wasteful, though maybe not as easy or quick, ways to ferment it.
Just think: almost every corporation is this wasteful or worse and we just let them do it for no good reason.
Yeah... Working any sort of factory or warehouse job will reeeeeeally change anyone's tune on the solution being reusable grocery bags, metal straws, and buying cans over bottles. I work live events and occasionally in a warehouse for the gear. Had a big project assembling a ton of stage cable packages for a bunch of different venues. All the plastic sheathed cable spools come wrapped in plastic, along with boxes of individually plastic wrapped plastic jacks, all plastic wrapped onto a pallet. We assemble the various cable lengths they need, put it back in boxes, and plastic wrap it back to a pallet to send it out. Just oodles and oodles of plastic that only exist to keep things organized shipping from A to B to C. And then what happens at these venues? Pallets and pallets of plastic water bottles, plastic wrapped into 24 packs, plastic wrapped onto a pallet get broken down and used to keep the crew hydrated during setup / teardown. Or sold. Oh or maybe it's an AV call where miles of plastic tape is used to secure cables to the floor or eachother just for the one or two days the event is on. And maybe some of the gear isn't on rolling cases, so it comes plastic wrapped onto a pallet as well, and plastic wrapped again to send back to the warehouse Yeah... Getting rid of plastic straws and grocery bags is good. But it's a drop in the ocean. Nothing is going to change without largely removing single use plastics from manufacturing and shipping.
I think it was Warren Buffet (might be misremembering) that was very pro plastic/emissions tax because these are forms of pollution where the free market doesn't properly represent the true cost of the good being purchased. The cost to produce and utilize the single use plastic is a small portion of the total life cycle "cost" of the plastic (recycling/garbage/environmental cleanup, microplastics in the water, etc.). An upfront tax at the time of original sale would help adjust buying behaviour and create an economic incentive to at least explore alternate packaging options. Sidenote: I think the anti-paper "save the trees" environmental messaging of the 90's/early 00's may have been a bit misguided in retrospect due to the industry pivots it resulted in. Sustainable forestry practices: very important, and worth rioting to encourage. Avoiding all paper products: simply causes a pivot to the next cheap material: plastic.
It's supposed to be airtight and keep for up to a year. If you're a farmer betting your entire business on the integrity of this wrap id be pretty generous with wrapping as well honestly.
This is why trying to recycling plastic bottles is a waste of time.
uh these wraps are usually ldpe. Those things ARE recycled plastic bottles. And can be recycled to be plastic bottles again. PE is the stuff we are good at recycling. If we get it seperated from other plastics that is. Most of the problem of our plastic recycling is that different kinds of plastics are mixed and seperating them is not feasible but with things like plastic bottles or these wraps when they come in only with other PE it is easily done.
What happens to all that plastic?
We generally throw it in the closest ocean.
Sometimes they pay to send it to be dropped off at a farther ocean
They should take it outside the environment.
Into another environment?
No, out of the environment. It is beyond the environment
Alternatively we can feed it to sea turtles.
don't be a negative nancy we also break it down into tiny lil micro bits and breathe it in nice and deep
When I grew up on a farm we bucked hay by hand and stored it in a barn. Ya’ll are getting soft.
I call this type of plastic "the flag of farmers". You see it stuck in trees and on barbed wire fences all around farms that use it.
It gets recycled. There's a place to drop it off down the road fromy place.
Is it plastic or something like cellophane?
We used to use it and now I sell the equipment that does this kinda stuff. It's kind of like thick plastic wrap you put on food, it sticks to itself which keeps everything sealed better. Like other comments said this can be done to make silage as well as simply preserve some of the bales for later use for cattle feed. Not many people do it, they just buy it as they need it really.
I was wondering more about the material the wrap is made of. ~~Cellophane is made of plant material and biodegradable and compostable while petroleum based plastics aren't. It seems like cellophane would be a natural choice for this sort of application, but natural choices aren't always the best economical ones.~~ edit: I regret mentioning any examples that distracted from knowing what material the wrap is made from and whether the wrap is degradable or not. My apologies for the confusion and distraction.
While cello does biodegrade more naturally, the [manufacturing of cello](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/cellophane#:~:text=Cellophane%20is%20made%20from%20a,reconvert%20the%20viscose%20into%20cellulose.) involves soaking chemically dissolved plant material in a bath of sulphuric acid and sodium sulphate to make cellulose, so that probably cancels out any environmental benefits the end result might be. It’s also a more expensive product.
Well shit, that sucks.
I’m not a chemical engineer but I am a chemist. The sulfuric acid and the sodium sulfate are perhaps the two most innocuous chemicals on the list you could’ve chosen outside of cellulose itself. The main problems with cellophane production are threefold: 1) it’s happening at scale under the premise it can be recycled when it cannot, 2) one of the most evil companies on the face of the planet is being entrusted with proper waste management, and 3) its synthesis, like almost all other synthetic polymers, is full of petrochemicals. The fact that it comes from plant material is a distraction meant to make it look more sustainable than it is.
> sulphuric acid and sodium sulphate That's not *that* bad. Sulphur compounds can be reused relatively easily and cheaply.
Forgot to mention the carbon disulphide solution they soak the plant matter in to get viscose. That stuff is really nasty.
in norway it's done all the time to preserve dry hay for the winter
Exactly. Do y'all use round or square bales over there mostly? Here ist mostly round.
round
there may be a collection point that says "recycling" on it, but plastic films are not recycled pretty much anywhere. Plastic quality tends to degrade with each recycling (and typically fresh plastics are mixed in at each stage), and the plastics in film simply aren't usable anymore. Or more to the point, recycling them isn't economically viable.
Does it? I'm pretty sure this type of plastic is completely unrecyclable.
Doubt (X)
Plastic recycling is a scam. None of it is actually recycled. They probably sell it to some other country where they dump it in the ocean or bury it next to some ecologically sensitive spot for maximum damage.
Here in Norway we are required to return it.
as a norwegian i find it werde that this is not standard everywere
We actually have to show the evidence that we delivered it every year. And we also pay a climate tax on every roll of plastic we buy. Its stupid expensive and we dont waste it, but with our varying weather changes we really just need do it when we can.
Blows around getting stuck on fences, trees and makes cool effects waving in a stream.
It also serves as food for various fish birds and turtles, great stuff
Just like nature intended
This is the difference between a hay bale and a silage bale. The wrap allows for it to ferment and become silage, which keeps nutrients and moisture at much higher levels than dry hay can achieve.
Ooh? Like a silo, only smaller and not reusable?
Fermentation causes heat, which can cause a fire. A whole ass silo on fire would be very bad. Hay shouldn't be stacked while it's still wet for the same reason.
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Seems like that machine is a lot more expensive than a silo.
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LET THEM KNOW RICK!!!! 🚜
And most farmers just rent the equipment
There are driving silos as well. 2 walls of concrete, put the grass inbetween, compress it and then seal it with a large plastic cover. Iirc that one could be reusable. But silage seems to be prone to mold, so the larger the portions are, there more of the cattle food is at risk. The piles are opened at one end and needs to be emptied at a constant rate to prevent mold at the surface area. These bales are a convenient sweet spot for farmers. Easy to transport around, little risk, like one spoiled bale doesn't mean your cattle can't be fed in winter. But man, oil and plastic is still too cheap if we can do shit like that. OTOH i don't wanna know how cattle farmers would bitch and moan and increase beef prices if we restrict bale wrapping.
That is one of the steps to making silage to those wondering why. Thank you farming simulator for teaching me new things.
Thank you to mods so I don't have to load them 2 at a time.
Seems incredibly wasteful. My local farmers put it under a tarp he can reuse, no plastic wrap needed...
Why so much wrap around it?
From own experience, its that much to protect the haybales from molds spreading inside. We have cats that made tiny cuts with their claws inside the plastic and we had to throw like 4 haybales away.
How did they do it before plastics?
Put it under a roof.
Seems like we’re sliding backwards in intelligence in many things, no?…
Thoughts and prayers
Serious answer. Giant pits. Look up silage pits. It's a fermenting process to preserve the grass. It stays a lot wetter than hay and can be easier to make in wetter climates. And can hold onto more nutrients than hay depending on the process.
We use silos for this now right?
Silos are expensive. Some old school places use pits. Bales are the most convenient on small to mid sized farms as you can store and move it without much fuss.
Unless they spontaneously combust in the barn.
Well, technically it's not hay. Unless the definitions in English are different. Hay is dried grass. This is achieved by leaving it on the sun in the field for up to several days and turning it over a couple times until it's almost completely dry. (or hanging it on beams in a special structure made for drying grass). You can see it's dry by its very washed out green color, looking almost gray. Hay is then stored loose in large compartments or in bales with string (no wrap). What is shown above looks like grass that still has moisture and is being wrapped for silage. By wrapping it air & water tight while it still has moisture inside, it ferments and becomes silage. It's much more nutritional feed compared to hay and makes it smell really nice.
Used to make silage, silage leachate is some very potent stuff so you don’t want it making its way into water ways.
Nope. Not enough plastic. Definitely not enough.
Needs at least 500% more plastic to be sure.
There's still some hay in that plastic, very inefficient.
The fuck are they protecting it from, a bomb? What the fuck edit: thanks for the answers dudes!
Air & water. It needs to be airtight so it can ferment and exposure to outside will make it mold. Scratch one tiny hole into it and you can probably throw half of bale away.
It isn't all used right away and it needs to last. It is recycled thankfully. But yeah, it is A LOTTTT.
Funny how I'm not allowed a plastic shopping bag anymore tho...
I'll take "Why is everyone and everything on the Earth being poisoned by microplastics?" for $500, Alex.
That's not how Jeopardy works man.
(not to ruin the joke but microplastics are mostly from tire rubber)
I love a good auto bailer video but omg I’m tired of the plastic use in this world
Imagine being kidnapped by that! 🫠
Won’t lie, was kinda thinking something along those lines also.
This is some dr suess shit
Tanto plástico no es necesario :c
Why the baby-making music? I'm not into hay like that.
And we have to use paper straws🙄
Seems Excessive 🫠
I wonder why our planet is getting destroyed, could it be using 8x the plastic wrap you need for a single bale of hay? We need to force people to reuse plastic that's left over, this shit is kinda ridiculous.
So it's not retail packaging for the bail of hay, they wrap it to ferment the hay into silage for animal feed, it has to be wrapped like this to make it airtight, or it will go bad.
Man, I wonder what we did for the last.. thousand years? Maybe two? I don't care what the reason is, that shit is not sustainable.
Well professor for the last thousand years they didn't have large scale cattle farms that couldn't survive without it, don't like it make sure you aren't eating any beef or consuming any dairy
For the last thousand years, 99 out of 100 were constantly working on fields and still barely produced enough to not starve to death. If you are ok to enjoy your current office life when a single farmer feeds 100 people, you would have to accept that that productivity is not done by magic but by resources used.
Are you a farmer? Otherwise how do you know that it's 8x the amount you need?
That's green biodegradable material btw.
What a waste of plastic
Hey. That’s not a marshmallow…
thank God we got rid of those plastic straws
Holy plastic waste.
Isn't that a ridiculous amount of plastic?
Post titles at its least finest 😍
I downvoted for the stupid unnecessary music: KEEP THE ORIGINAL AUDIO
This is why the planet is dying. Thats 10x the amount of plastic needed. Holy fuck.
Just the right amount. It's recycled. Silage.
That can't be the normal amount of wrapping, it looks way too much!
I’m sorry to tell you but it is
Nothing gets me in the mood to farm like Rhythm and Bale music.
Can I have that machine’s phone number?
Is this porn for spiders?
What I mean when I say tuck me in
So dangerous
Will it mold?
so i cant use an plastic straw but if i have to wrap up some grass i can use a million?
Put me in there
is there anyway to make this machine smaller? yk, like small enough to wrap a brick about a foot long
Thats probably most plastic than the straws I ever used the last 4 years
Mr. Frodo!
Man that's so efficient. At my grandparents farm we used to have to lift each bale up on the front loader and put the bag on and then tie it closed once it had been placed on the big bale pyramid. If you're thinking this is a waste of plastic wait until you see stuff that's delivered on pallets. I've worked events for a while now and often we palletise stock off the main trailer, get the telehandler to move it to the relevant bar and then another team unwraps and bins the plastic pallet wrap. Probably in use for 5 minutes or so
All that plastic …
Thank god I use soggy paper straws
Does it need THAT much plastic? Holy shit.
They wrap it so it ferments, the fermented grass tastes better apparently
Must be fun to have to change the plastic wrap spool every 10 fucking minutes.
Seems like they overdid it a little bit on the plastic wrap but pretty cool I guess
god i wish that were me
Imagine gleefully rolling around in the hay, suddenly being pressed into a bale, and then trapped like this. It's more common than you think...
Top tier engineering 🤌
That's how i want to be tucked into bed.
Girl are you a hay bale? 'Cause I wanna pick you up and fondle you while wrapping you up in a plastic sheet
Why so much wrapping? Seems like a waste.
This isn’t satisfying im stressed tf out by that amount of plastic
But I can’t use a plastic bag at the grocery store.
Reminds me of the grocery store: Plastic bag for tomato’s Plastic bag for garlic Plastic bag for potatoes Meat Seafood Chicken Broccoli Celery Hot dogs Corn Frozen French fries Inside bag of cereal Deli Cheese Deli Turkey Plastic container for: sour cream, cream, milk, juice etc. BUT WE CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT BC WE CHARGE YOU TO BUY YOUR OWN BAGS TO REUSE!!!!! Just a money grab disguised as environmental care!
So much waste
It went around 6 times to cover it fully... then it went around 16 times more.
THIS is why I still use plastic straws. Because the dent I am making by not using them is ridiculous compared to the rest of industry.
that's wasting soooooooooo much plastic
"So why do we have so much plastic in the ocean again?" "Boomers did a bunch of stupid shit."
It's good to see the cows are finally getting a square meal 🐮