Biodegradable plastic bags: biggest greenwashing hoax ever!
• Biodegradable plastic bags, like ethanol, are made from food - typically, vegetable oils and corn starch. How much "green" sense does that make?
• It takes more energy to produce a biodegradable plastic bag than a petro-plastic one. As a result, they are more expensive and cause more CO2 emissions in their manufacture. How much "green" sense does that make?
• Biodegradable plastic bags require a warm, microbe-rich environment to biodegrade in a short period of time. Most of Canada's climate is unsuitable for short-term biodegradation. How much "green" sense does that make?
• Assuming it does actually biodegrade, all of the carbon that goes into the biodegradable bag's life cycle - from cultivation, to processing, to manufacturing, to biodegradation - ends up in the atmosphere as greenhouse gases - CO2 and methane (which is 21 times as powerful as CO2). In contrast, most of the carbon that goes into making regular plastic bags (the carbon in the petroleum itself) ends up sequestered in landfill or recycled. How much "green" sense does that make?
• Petro-plastic bags can be recycled, but biodegradable plastic bags cannot. How much "green" sense does that make?
• Municipalities that recycle plastic bags regard biodegradable plastic bags as contaminants in the waste stream, including the compostable ("green bin") waste stream. The mechanical devices that recover plastic bags from these waste streams cannot distinguish between bio-plastics and petro-plastics. All of it is removed, bundled into bales, and sent to recyclers. But recycled plastic products containing biodegradable plastic are structurally compromised and thus commercially worthless. How much "green" sense does that make?
I suspect that clean coal is a far bigger greenwashing hoax than biodegradable shopping bags. Maybe petro-bags are recyclable, but are they recycled? Most of them seem to end up in landfills, the oceans and on the roadside in front of the farm here. Just for that reason alone the biodegradable bags make some sense. The labour and energy needed to collect those disposed petro-bags might be far more than goes into the production of the bio-bags.
Ofcourse it is a mistake to collect the bio-bags with the petro-bags, the bio-bags should probably go in the compost bin. just as it is a mistake to put a petro-bag into the compost.
Reminds me that I should see if my goats will be able to digest the bio-bags.
I’m going to have to agree that making plastic bags from PLA (Corn starch plastic) is a bad idea. PLA is a bad idea altogether. The plastic is made from genetically modified corn which isn’t fit for human consumption. Land that should be used for growing food crops is being diverted to grow federally subsidized corn crops that are used for ethanol and PLA plastic. Countries that rely on importing our grains care cutting down large tracts of forests, including rain forests to grow corn. Food prices have increased since our government decided that we should support the corn for fuel program. Growing corn for PLA and ethanol is increasing the use of pesticides which is having an adverse affect on our fresh water supplies. Did I mention that it is a bad idea altogether? I don’t think we should be making plastic bags from petroleum either. Taking a reusable bag to the store to carry our groceries is probably the smartest thing to do. Max
[spam link removed, spammer begone!]
Bubbles... yes, the current spate of clean coal advertisements on late night television is scaring the hell out of me.
Until I see as many ordinary consumers believing the clean coal hoax as believe the bio-plastic hoax, I will continue to maintain that the latter is the biggest greenwashing hoax to date.
Even people who see through the ethanol hoax are taken in by the bio-plastic scam.
Damn. That sucks. I didn't know that. I assumed that buying those biodegradable plastic bags to line green bins was a good idea, for instance. :(
Thanks for the heads up, M. Spector. I feel kind of hopeless about the green bin program here in Toronto, and this certainly doesn't help.
Nice spam move, Max.
As Marketing Manager of ENSO Bottles LLC you're doing a fine job.
Too bad your plastic bottles are just as bad. If they do degrade (which is doubtful in Canada's climate) they turn into greenhouse gases Co2 and methane.
And to top it off, they're made from petroleum!
Hey M. Spector, I just removed the link from his original thread - would you mind removing it from your post? Let's not reward him for spamming us by letting his link stand.
Done.
I wonder if biodegradable bags could be made from the sorts of alternative feedstocks that are being considered for biofuel? E.g. Switchgrass, various types of algae or seaweed, The ideal feedstock would be something that can be grown very well in marginal climates with only modest water requirements and little to no artificial fertilizer or pesticides. Something you can grow where food doesn't grow very well (or even better, regenerates the soil as it grows). Or that grows well in the shade so you don't have to clear out trees for it. In other words, less demanding and less liable to displace food production than corn.
I've had a thing about plastic shopping bags since forever. Have to admit, environmental concerns weren't the principle driving factor in my hatred of the things, but the clutter created by people who think it's handy to have a few milliion of them stored in a closet. But, in fairness to myself, the environmental impact of such bags was part of my considerations over twenty years ago.
So, I welcome the cloth bag revolution. I was a pioneer.
Having said that, my record for remembering to bring a cloth shopping bag with me to the store is shamefully, about 10% of the time.
You'd think I would be much better than that. I'd think I'd be much better than that.
Habits are hard to change.
Spector, you might be right about the number of people believing in clean coal versus bio-bags. I was thinking more in terms of environmental impact. The devastation that clean coal can cause is likely to be far greater than the impact of biodegradable bags in my opinion.
I am not sure about your area, but around here the bio-bags are little used. The use of reusable bags has realy taken off here. In my estimation it has jumped from maybe ten percent to sixty, maybe even seventy percent in the last eighteen months.
What do you think the next big green hoax will be? Urbanization, cash for clunkers, electric cars, etc.
Another biggy that I notice around here are these little solar powered electric garden LEDs.
Tommy, that's why I now have about a hundred reusable bags in my home. Sigh.
I know I kinda changed the subject to something silly, but writing about something like that is sorta like therapy. I'll probably remember more often now. In fact, I have some shopping to do later tonight-- let's see if I remember. It's hard though, getting Snarfy the Wondergirl out of the house is like hearding cats, and I get distracted. Well, it's not all her-- it's her and my pathological focus on just negotiating the intricacies of getting out of the house. Which used to be a big deal when I had three kids to manage, but, really Doc, Snarfy's not that big a deal. Just habits from the old days.
Seriously, the news that the methane is thawing, and once again the models have been wrong on the bad side means that these little things like shopping bags, recycling etc., are going to appear whimsical in the next few years.
We are in serious deep shit.
It worked, just returned from shopping, and I remembered the cloth bags, in spite of many distractions.
And, they held all the coal I bought for the furnace, once I lined them with a thin sheet of styrofoam.
Were the deck chairs on the Titanic made from teak, fossil fuel plastic, or biodegradable bioplastics?
I think the paper industry has to step up to the plate with viable alternatives to plastic bags.
Paper is made from a renewable, recyclable resource that is not food, and produces little, if any, methane when it biodegrades.
It's not just shopping bags, but all kinds of plastic bags that need to be replaced - sandwich bags, doggie poop bags, garbage bags.
Why did paper technology stop fifty years ago with the standard brown paper bag? Did the advent of plastic bags cause the paper industry to throw up their hands in surrender? Why can't we make a waterproof, durable, flexible paper product to replace the polyethylene film that bags are made of?
Thanks for this thread mspector, have been advocating the criminalization of plastics and banning of them here at babble for a while now.
If India can do it for single use plastics, so can Canada.
We have been using re-usable bags for over 20 years, and do not use so called green garbage bags either because long ago we recognized they used food production land for their production and thought "if this ever catches on, we will all starve", given the amounts of bags people use.
The alternative was get our garbage down to maybe a couple of bags a month, and use reusable ones for shopping, of any kind, not just groceries.
And disposable dippers have to go too.
And disposable dippers have to go too.
...along with the disposable tories & grits.
Opps, disposable diapers. :D
Good catch.
In away making plastic bags from fossil fuel makes sense. The problem is that we mostly use them once and then they become waste that clutters up the environment. It is the burning of fossil fuel that is the big problem, but using fossil oil or coal to make lasting structural components that can be recycled many times is probably less of a problem then making those same products from plant fibre. Trees are very much part of our food cycle. They produce the oxygen that we need to utilize the food we take in. Also dead trees , via the composting process, are food for their replacements.
Paper, basically cellulose, can be made water proof. You could make it into cellulose acetate and use it like a plastic. But it does not recycle very well. Or you could coat paper with wax or plastic, but that again tends to be derived from oil and makes the paper difficult to recycle. One could use bees wax, but it takes the bees about two to three lbs of honey, food again, to make one lbs of bees wax. Remember that the next time you burn a beeswax candle.
That's right everyone, mind your own beeswax.
I wonder what the carbon footy print is on cloth bags? I imagine it's planted and harvested with big huge machines instead of human labour (but not necessarily, just where does our cotton come from these days?)
But even at that, at least they are reused over and over. Got to be an improvement.
Rememberizing back to the days of my youth, paper got a bad name for poisoning the environment with things like Mercury. The terrible birth deffects at Grassy Narrows sticking out in my mind particularly.
But, it seems easy enough to me. Tell manufacturers, packagers, retailers that if the material isn't on the list of recyclable items in municiple recycling programs, they can't use it.
Unless those cloth bags are made of organic cotton (unlikely) they have a very big environmental footprint:
Soil Association
Besides which, I find the reusable cloth bags rather unhygienic. Pesticides and dirt and meat drippings collect inside.
I continue to use plastic bags. I use them, I reuse them, and on occasion, I recycle them (it can be done). For day-to-day convenience, i buy a standard plastic bag whenever I need one. For bigger shopping excursions, I have a bag full of bags I've collected in the car. When a bag has carried something dubious, it gets placed where it will get used to line a garbage container. New, clean bags are reused regularly instead of plastic-wrap in the fridge - we've never had a roll of stretch wrap in the house.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, and remember - you can't consume yourself into a balance with nature.
Toronto and many other municipalities take plastic grocery bags in the recycling bin.
They are fully recyclable into other products, such as plastic lumber - provided they don't get contaminated with bio-plastics. Nobody wants to have (even partly) bio-degradable plastic lumber.
The footprint on the reusable tote bags is just for an offsetting carbon footprint program. It just means that the manufacturer (or importer as is the case with the Canadian supplier) pays for the damage to be "offset" through things such as tree planting.
and biodegradable plastic bags are not a greenwashing hoax. They are often given a trumped up purpose but here's the truth...
The ideal solution to the problems is to use reusable tote bags like the ones found hereEnvironmentally Friendly Tote Bagshowever many people forget these bags so stores need something they can distribute.
I think some more thought should be put into these options before they're labelled a hoax. There are a lot of green hoaxes out there but this is definitely not one of them.
Mike
Toronto doesn't take plastic grocery bags in the recycling bin, unless that's changed recently. Has it?
It has, as far as I know.
I don't know if the city takes them, but the local Metro grocer and Home Depot do.
The ideal solution to the problems is to use reusable tote bags like the ones found here...
What is it about this thread that attracts the greenwashing spammers?
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BTW, Toronto does take plastic grocery bags in the recycling bin.
The ideal solution to the problems is to use reusable tote bags like the ones found here...
What is it about this thread that attracts the greenwashing spammers?
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BTW, Toronto does take plastic grocery bags in the recycling bin.
Spector I think it's all of the incorrect information that draws out people who know what they're talking about, to refute those who don't have all of the information, yet due to technology still have a say that's voiced to thousands.
If calling me a greenwashing spammer makes you feel better about your missinformed opening post then go nuts. I did put links to a company you can buy some products from, a Canadian source selling Canadian made bio bags, something that's directly applicable to this topic (hosted on a Canadian site...).
The fact of the matter is that it was not spam since the post was written solely for this board and it contained more information than anything you've offered thus far.
Sorry to the rest of the board for this post but it's frustrating when people like M. Spector are uneducated in a field such as this but are still self-righteous enough to feel the need to educate everyone else and condemn a very real attempt at helping the environment.
As to your opening points, here's a refutation to everything you said...
- Only a small portion of biodegradable bags are made from renewable energy sources (or as you put it food although it also includes cellulose and starches from various non food sources) the vast majority of bio plastics are polypropylene (you can't eat that spector) with a degradable additive that breaks down the plastic into small enough particles to be consumed by microbes.. that makes green sense...
- That's true of hydro-biodegradable but not true of the vast majority of biodegradable plastics which take exactly the same amount of energy to produce since they're the same base material, polypropylene... that makes green sense...
- biodegradable plastic bags do require a warm microbe-rich environment to biodegrade and your food bags get this when composted since compost gets very hot when the microbes are at work, this generates more than enough heat to allow for the proper conditions to break down. The majority of bags that are oxo biodegradable however are triggered by any one of or combo of (depending on the formula) uv rays, physical stress, water. This means that even if left outside in the Kugluktuk (where they do use Elmhirst Packaging bio bags) in December they will still start to break down and sure they may just be degrading and will have to wait until warm weather to be consumed by bacteria and technically biodegrade but at least it could potentially save the life of a seal that could try to consume the otherwise full bag (something that matters to us green spammers but probably not someone as one with the world as yourself)... that makes green sense....
- You do have a bit of a point with this one however the majority of the carbon comes from the production which for oxo-bio plastics is the same as standard plastic bags so you're not saving much by not switching. The fact is that when things are composted (like leaves, bio bags, etc.) they put off CO2. It's a fact of life. we shouldn't start heaping leaves in microbe free landfills just to cut down on CO2 emissions just like we shouldn't opt for plastic that can last potentially for a thousand plus years just to cut down on a bit of natural CO2 from microbes digesting.
- Again the majority of biodegradable bags are oxo-biodegradable which are polyethylene based and recyclable just like standard plastic bags since they have the same main component and recycling centers add a poly bond stabilizer since plastic being recycled naturally breaks down and looses integrity. This stabilizer also has the added effect of counteracting the oxo degradable formula making it have the same properties as standard plastic again... that makes green sense...
- Not true... oxo-bio plastics are fine in the recycling stream but not in the compost. hydro biodegradable plastics (that meet BPI certifications, i.e. ASTM d6400 standards) are fine in the compost stream and are strongly supported by most municipalities with the green bin program. It's true though that there's a problem with hydra bio plastics in the recycling stream since the machinery can't distinguish them and they aren't able to be recycled. That's why green spammers such as myself are lobbying (and not just saying How much "green" sense does that make on some forum) the government to make it standard for additives to be put in the hydra biodegradable plastics that show up under UV light so that the machinery in the recycling plant could see them and pull them off the line.
You might want to do some research or at least not claim things you know nothing about.
cheers.
Mike
Elmhirst Packaging Ltd. - Earth Friendly, truly Green, Products
Well, I am a consumer who believes the "Clean Coal" is a bigger greenwashing than biodegradeable reusable shopping bags.
There are myriad issues here tho... corn is bad food for many people so it might as well be made into bags, GMO corn might be a general hazard to nature.
But ya, it is a bad idea because it involves crop land being used for things other than food.
Furthermore, there is a new announcement that plastic can be turned into oil for less than $10/bbl {see new thread on that - OCt 6th.
Bottom line: I am happy with my plastic fibre reusable shopping bag [allready saved over 1000 plastic bags myself!!]
Well, I am a consumer who believes the "Clean Coal" is a bigger greenwashing than biodegradeable reusable shopping bags.
Bigger in what sense?
This is pretty feeble. Corn is not "bad food" for the people who eat it - which they can't do if it's made into plastic bags. And we're going to combat GM corn by making it into plastics? Sheesh.
The fact of the matter is that it was not spam since the post was written solely for this board...
You may not be aware that babble charges money for advertising. Using the forums to get free promotion for your company is spamming.
You can't eat polypropylene because it's made from ....fossil fuels! That doesn't make green sense.
The "degradable additive" ensures that biodegradable plastics become a source of contamination for plastic recycling processes. Nobody wants products made from recycled plastic if they are going to break up into small particles. And biodegradable plastics are incompatible with most municipal recycling and composting systems. That doesn't make green sense.
Microbes turn the plastic particles into CO2 and methane. You might as well just burn the plastic bags! That doesn't make green sense.
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Biodegradable plastic bags carry more ecological harm than good:
Decomposing bags sound environmentally friendly but they require a lot of energy to make, won't degrade in landfills and may leave toxic leftovers.
And, while most manufacturers say that to put only tiny amounts of metals into the plastic, the US study found that one brand contained "very high levels of lead and cobalt", raising questions about the toxicity of the leftovers.
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Consumers don't know the difference between oxo-biodegradable and hydro-biodegradable plastic bags. They are not marked as such. Good luck getting consumers to put hydro-bio plastics in their compost but oxo-hydro plastics in the recycling.
The average consumer thinks that shelling out five times as much money for biodegradable plastics as for petro-plastics is worth it because they have bought the industry propaganda that they are "helping the environment". Then they happily chuck the plastic in their compost bins, or far more likely the municipal compost or blue-box recycling bins, completely oblivious to the problems they are causing for the recycling and composting programs, and to the environmental cost of the production and disposal of these bio-plastics.