Sustainable Plastics
By Max
There is a lot of concern about the growing plastic pollution problem, and rightly so. Did you know?
* Plastic bottles take hundred or thousands of years to begin biodegrading
* 150 billion plastic beverage bottles are produced each year
* 70-80% of plastic bottles are not recycled
* 100 billion plastic bottles end up in landfills, roadsides, streams or oceans
* The average American consumes 167 bottles of water a year
* Bottled water is the second most popular beverage in the United States
* A majority of containers today are made from plastic
It seems that a lot of interest is being placed on bottled water, but take a look at the shelves where you shop; almost everything is packaged in plastic. Bottled water has become an easy target; many of us think that because our tap water is safe, it must be safe everywhere else. I wish that were true, most places in the world don’t have safe drinking water. We should be focusing on the pollution caused by all plastics and insist that plastics be designed to be sustainable. Sustainable plastics regardless of what it is made from, petroleum or plants should be biodegradable and designed to meet“Cradle to Cradle,” design criteria. A cradle to cradle product is made from something, used, reused, recycled and when its useful life is over, it returns to the earth as a harmless substance.
Biodegradable Plastic are You Confused?
Biodegradable Plastics, what does it mean and why is there so much confusion about something that sounds so simple to define? The ASTM defines biodegradable plastics as “a degradable plastic in which the degradation results from the action of naturally-occurring micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and algae”. Sounds simple enough, so why all the confusion? The confusion really comes from two aspects; 1) confusion between using the term degradable vs. biodegradable and 2) the loose use of the word biodegradable.
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