Some Biodegradable Plastics Don't Live Up To Their Claims

ckwu writes From bread bags to beverage bottles, many plastics now contain additives designed to make the materials biodegradable. But a new study shows that plastics made with such additives do not biodegrade in the environment significantly faster than those without the compounds. Researchers prepared films of commercial plastics with three different types of additives supplied by their manufacturers. The researchers then treated the film samples to mimic disposal of such plastics in a compost pile, a landfill, and soil. After about six months of composting, a year and a half of landfill-like conditions, and three years of soil burial, the plastics with additives did not show any more evidence of biodegradation than plastics without them.

Comments

Sequester them

[doconnor]

Why would we want our oil produces biodegrading into carbon dioxide when they can be easily sequestered in the ground?

They are spending a great deal of money trying to sequester the carbon dioxide from our other oil produces in the ground.

Re:My $0.02

[ShanghaiBill]

20 years ago I got a yellow rain jacket ... It is still usable today.

20 years ago, my house was made of biodegradable wood. It is still usable today.

Biodegradable doesn't mean it just magically falls apart after a pre-programmed amount of time. It means it will rot under appropriate conditions. Bury your raincoat in your backyard, water well, and then go back and see if it is still there in 20 years.

Re:Recycle and bioplastics

[Registered Coward v2]

> A real recycle program, not one where you have to pay to get the stuff taken away

Or worse, a recycle program where you have to drive somewhere to drop it off. For instance, currently in my area, although we have curbside recycling for glass and some plastics and cardboard, there's currently no way to recycle CFLs that doesn't involve driving to a recycling center. Besides wasted fuel and emissions, the collateral damage of this is that most people just throw CFLs away and the mercury ends up in landfill. And groundwater.

Yup. Given the choice of an 80 mile round trip to a location that is only open M-F during normal business hours and tossing them in the trash guess which one gets picked? Ultimately I think one solution would be to require the manufacturer to take back and arrange for recycling or proper disposal. That would add to the upfront cost but eliminate a lot of back end problems. Of course, manufacturers will whine about the cost but I think bottle deposit laws are a good example of what may happen. Bottlers complained but when states tried to take over rte program they resisted because they were taking in more deposit money than they were paying out and spending to run the program.