Since the plastic production is becoming an issue for the future of our planet, many people turned to recycling. However, there is still too much plastic that either cannot be recycled or carelessly ends up in a regular household trash and eventually in landfills. There, as many already know, it takes up to a thousand years to degrade. And if you think about millions of tons of plastic produced every year around the world, the amounts are staggering.
Thus, many European supermarkets turned to bioplastic packaging to replace the conventional petroleum-based plastics. Bioplastic is derived from plant starch such as corn or peas or vegetable oils. Moreover, they degrade fairly quickly in both landfills or your own compost. A perfect solution to all our problems, it seems. However, bioplastics come with a variety of issues.
First of all, it’s not too environmentally sound to create bioplastic on a large scale since it’s derived from plants. Crops must be grown to provide material for the production of bioplastics thus contributing to deforestation and food shortages. Secondly, the bioplastic packaging is virtually identical to regular plastic packaging and therefore creates a fair amount of confusion for the customers who end up not knowing whether it’s safe to recycle or to throw away. Moreover, if bioplastic product is put in the plastic recycle container it contaminates the contents, making the plastic, which would otherwise be perfectly recyclable, non-recyclable. And thirdly, the production of bioplastic increases the amount of fossil fuels burnt, which simply defeats the purpose.
Therefore, it’s a simple conclusion that companies would be better off investing in educating the public about recycling the existing plastic instead of wasting precious resources on creating even more disposable plastic, even a kind that would biodegrade fairly quickly.
