I received a present the other day, that had been bought at the Royal Horticultural Society in Britain, packaged in a plastic bag bearing this information ‘Please compost this bag. This bag is made with G.M.-free renewable corn starch. Put your kitchen waste inside, deposit it with the bag in your compost heap and it will break down completely.’
What a breakthrough! We live in a land of mielies – the source of corn starch – is there a hope that something of this kind might be undertaken here? Maybe it is a solution to the curse of the ubiquitous plastic bag.
Angela Smitherman, Pinelands
Every so often, the Veld & Flora Committee receives requests to package the magazine in ‘biodegradable’ plastic (which South Africa indeed can and does manufacture) instead of the rather severe brown paper envelope. Recently we asked the opinion of The Green House, sustainability engineers specializing in product life cycle assessments, to see if we could be packing it in a more environmentally responsible way. They gave us some interesting facts and assured us that our paper envelopes were as eco-friendly, if not more so, than ‘biodegradable’ (including compostable) plastic. If the
ReplyDeletecompostible plastic bag does indeed end up in the compost heap, it may be beneficial to the environment, although it is important to bear in mind that the process of growing the corn (for the cornstarch to manufacture the bag) uses fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, clears natural vegetation and burns fossil fuel. However, plastic made from ‘cornstarch’ and other
‘bio’ materials most often still find their way into landfills where they can go anaerobic and produce methane (a powerful greenhouse gas).
Furthermore, they often still contain up to 50% percent synthetic plastic derived from oil. They are also not suitable for recycling, and although
designed to go onto the compost heap, often end up ‘contaminating’ recyclable plastic.