Although they are eventually degradable, the process is very slow, taking two to five years compared with bioplastics taking six months,” said Mr Ittipol.ĭr Baltus said that it was easy in Thailand to find oxos plastics described as true bioplastics, which in his view is incorrect. “Therefore, oxos are not biodegradable as they are fragmented or disintegrated into smaller pieces by sunlight, oxygen or microbes. Oxo-biodegradable plastics, however, are still conventional petroleum-based plastic with a small quantity of additives that initiate degradation. Ittipol Jangchud, a lecturer at the King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology’s Lat Krabang Faculty of Science, said true bioplastics degrade without leaving residual fragments. The difference between oxos and biodegradable plastics are not clear among the public, said Wolfgang Baltus,the senior project manager with the National Innovation Agency.

The Thai Bioplastics Industry Association is being urged to clarify its stance on whether oxo-biodegradable plastics known as “oxos”- should be termed biodegradable, as they are by some supermarket operators. In fact, pound for pound, methane contributes 20 times more to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. But if biodegradable plastics do break down in this oxygen-free environment, they’ll emit methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than CO2.Īs a result, methane gas gets released into the atmosphere. Usually, nothing biodegrades in a landfill. When biodegradable trash bags wind up in landfills, decomposition happens at a much slower rate than if the trash were exposed to air, light and moisture. Biodegradable bags can harm the environment. You wash them in 90C and out comes you ‘natural’ blue stains on all your whites. It’s like washing a bagful of white clothings and there’s a little dark blue knickers hidden somewhere among them.

“If a №7 plastic is mixed in and melted down with plastics labeled №1 or №2, it would contaminate the entire load because the chemical make-up of biodegradable bags are so different.” That means that if your bag is like most “biodegradable” bags, after filling them with trash, tied them up throw them away, picked up by the sanitary workers and trucks, transported to the landfill, buried in the landfill, will stay as the plastics bags you see and changes NOTHING.Īnd while some companies thought having a biodegradable additive (a special film) on their biodegradable bags that lets them decompose completely, that claim has been challenged in court and still lacks consensus.Ī №1 and a №2 can be recycled together, but throw in a biodegradable bag - a №7 plastic - and you’ll contaminate the whole “recyclable” load. Some companies, he says, are making conventional plastic that degrades quickly and then throwing around claims about biodegradability that are unproven or just too good to be true. “This word ‘biodegradable’ has become very attractive to people trying to make quick bucks on it,” explains Ramani Narayan, a professor of chemical and biochemical engineering at Michigan State University, who helped develop biodegradable corn-based plastic. There has been a lot of confusion surrounding these ecofriendlier plastics - some of it intentional. They are also not buoyant, so they’re going to sink, so they’re not going to be exposed to UV and break down,” she said.

A lot of plastics labelled biodegradable, like shopping bags, will only break down in temperatures of 50C and that is not the ocean nor landfill. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires landfills to block out air, moisture and sunlight which are the crucial elements for proper biodegradation.Īccording to Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist at the UN Environment Programme, who told the Guardian that these biodegradable plastics were not a simple solution in the sea too. Biodegradeable plastics cannot biodegrade if they are buried in the landfill or left in the sea. Not exactly how it should be.īut what your mother never told you because she didn’t know - is that biodegradable trash bags are anything but the environment’s friend. If you’re like me, you’ve preceded your purchase of biodegradable bags with a well-intended thought process that goes something like this: If I buy this bag, my trash will magically go back to nature - an ashes-to-ashes-dust-to-dust sort of thing - which makes me happier than imagining it rotting in a landfill.

Trash without plastic bags