Biodegradable Plastic: An Oxymoron?
For the most part, plastic claims one of the top spots on Mother Nature’s sh*t list. It’s light, cheap, durable, and incredibly useful, but it has a horrible impact on our environment. Plastic bottles, plastic bags, just about anything plastic, kills wildlife, poisons water, pollutes habitats, and/or chokes landfills. Plus, it’s made from non-renewable resources (petroleum, for example) and lasts virtually forever. No one knows exactly how long (I’ve seen estimates of a simple plastic soda bottle’s lifespan to be anywhere from 450 years to, literally, “forever’), but it’s clearly long enough to prove that our problems with plastic accumulation are just getting started.
Recently, however, while visiting Chicago Booth business school earlier this month, I stumbled across a glimmer of hope. In an attempt to avoid the obscene Chicago cold (yes, Charlotte has spoiled me), I sought refuge in a small cafeteria in one of Booth’s main buildings, the Harper Center. After deciding to grab a[nother] quick breakfast, I noticed a row of plastic water bottles featured in rows under each cashier counter. Upon further inspection, I found the bottles were sold by a company called Green Planet Bottling and were, apparently, biodegradable. I also soon discovered that the cafeteria had transitioned to biodegradable plastic utensils (not sure if these were the ones at Booth), made of natural materials like corn and potato starch, as well. Gotta give credit to Booth for their commitment to the environment.
Intrigued, I researched further, and it turns out there are quite a number of companies producing or selling biodegradable/compostable plastic materials. To name a few, Nat-Ur (check out Cereplast), Earthware Biodegradables, Biota (has a time-lapse video), and Eco-Products. A Google search will yield you many results. Most are compostable/recyclable, are made from renewable resources, will burn clean, and use less fossil fuel in production than do petroleum-based plastics. Good stuff, so far. Not surprisingly, however, although they represent an important step in the right direction, these biodegradable plastics are not a miracle cure to all our plastic problems. They all vary slightly, but one constant remains: you can’t just toss any of them out your car window and expect them to turn into a flower and a bunny rabbit a week later.
As far as I can tell, they all need to go through some form of “commercial” composting process, which exposes them to a combination of consistent high temperatures (~110-150 degrees F), micro-organisms, and moisture, a process that may not always be available. Under ideal circumstances, they take a minimum of about 80 days to decompose and much longer under imperfect conditions. There’s also apparently some controversy around the impact of clearing land that may be needed to grow the crops that will eventually be used to produce the plastics. Some even believe that, since our landfills are packed so tightly, bio-plastics that end up in the landfills, rather than in the proper recycling/composting facilities, could biodegrade anaerobically (without oxygen) and produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
To me, it seems the benefits far outweigh the costs, and one can only hope this trend continues to spread and the technology continues to improve, phasing out the negative trade-offs. In the meantime, though, one thing remains clear: the best way to reduce the impact of plastic on our environment is to simply minimize purchases of disposable plastic items and, if you have no choice, reuse as much as humanly possible, then recycle.
