Contributor and Cut&Paste Labs organizer Alexander White emailed me recently about PVC and DIY Espresso machines.

I was looking at designs for DIY espresso machines… most seem to use PVC piping, but isn’t that crazy-toxic? Would you really want that in your morning/mid-morning/afternoon/evening/before bed joe?

Hmmm, what’re alternative pipings?

For sure, PVC is not particularly healthy… but it’s used in water pipes in homes, as well as in pools. It’s not terrible FOR you, but the bad part about it is that, being a chlorinated vinyl, it’s manufacturing process is very bad for the environment. See the discussion at this old Vestal Blog post or visit the Wikipedia article on Polyvinyl chloride.

I try at all costs not to use vinyl, and ABS plastic may be a good alternative for those of you getting a DIY caffeine fix. It also has a better “failure mode”, as in, it just kind of stretches and turns whitish when it’s over-stressed, whereas PVC will shatter. Something to keep in mind especially when building a potato cannon.

EVA plastic is also a vinyl, but is not chlorinated. MUJI products occasionally use this, but it is not recyclable in most places.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Digg this | Hugg this

See Also: Terrible Disposable Fridge,Paperless Voting Ban Moves Forward,Rise of the Machines,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Warren on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 4:00 am and is filed under Design, Environment, Technology, Vestal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.