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Earth Science

Some Biodegradable Plastics Don't Live Up To Their Claims 98

Posted by timothy from the ya-don't-say-or-actually-ya-do dept.
ckwu writes From bread bags to beverage bottles, many plastics now contain additives designed to make the materials biodegradable. But a new study shows that plastics made with such additives do not biodegrade in the environment significantly faster than those without the compounds. Researchers prepared films of commercial plastics with three different types of additives supplied by their manufacturers. The researchers then treated the film samples to mimic disposal of such plastics in a compost pile, a landfill, and soil. After about six months of composting, a year and a half of landfill-like conditions, and three years of soil burial, the plastics with additives did not show any more evidence of biodegradation than plastics without them.
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Some Biodegradable Plastics Don't Live Up To Their Claims More

Some Biodegradable Plastics Don't Live Up To Their Claims

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  • A real recycle program, not one where you have to pay to get the stuff taken away, combined with more use of bioplastics might help if combined with industrial composting. Trying to make the existing stuff doesn't solve the problem; namely that we simply throw it away and bury it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The problem is that the companies selling crap products like this don't care if they really work or if they're helping reduce plastic in landfills. They simply want a buzzword which makes their product appear more desirable, and possibly allows them to charge a premium price.
      They're terrified of the competition which makes actual, biodegradable plastic-replacement out of cellulose.

      • Re:Recycle and bioplastics (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday March 19, 2015 @03:36PM (#49294727)

        don't care if they really work or if they're helping reduce plastic in landfills.

        Biodegradable does NOT mean they degrade in landfills. Landfills tend to have very dry conditions, so almost nothing will rot. It is common for them to contain century old newspapers, and dessicated food. Biodegradability is important for plastic discarded along roadsides, or adrift in the ocean, not for landfills. It is arguable whether it is even desirable to have landfill material decompose. Decomposing releases CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases. If the material remains intact, we can dig up and recover materials as recycling techniques improve. We are already doing this with some landfills. It is called Landfill Mining [wikipedia.org]. The only rationale for decomposing landfill material is the myth that we are "running out of space", but that is nonsense. We have enough landfill space to last for centuries, even with our current wasteful practices.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Cramer ( 69040 )

          Also, let's not delude people: no (petrochemical) plastic biodegrades. Nothing will eat the shit. It will chemically breakdown (albeit VERY slowly.) And it will photo-degrade, assuming sunlight can get to it and wasn't mixed with lots of UV stabilizer.

    • > A real recycle program, not one where you have to pay to get the stuff taken away

      Or worse, a recycle program where you have to drive somewhere to drop it off. For instance, currently in my area, although we have curbside recycling for glass and some plastics and cardboard, there's currently no way to recycle CFLs that doesn't involve driving to a recycling center. Besides wasted fuel and emissions, the collateral damage of this is that most people just throw CFLs away and the mercury ends up in landf

      • Re:Recycle and bioplastics (Score:5, Interesting)

        by nobuddy ( 952985 ) on Thursday March 19, 2015 @01:03PM (#49293517) Homepage Journal

        We had to separate glass, plastics, and paper. The a truck comes around and dumps all three bins and the garbage cans in to the same trash truck without any form of separator.

        And to induce more rage- they won't pick it up if it is not sorted properly.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          And to induce more rage- they won't pick it up if it is not sorted properly.

          Or you get a guy who suddenly decided not to pick up half the bins because they have something in it he does not like.

          My neighborhood went from an 90% recycle rate to sub teens in 2 weeks. Instead of leaving behind what he didnt like. He just left the whole bin and let us work it out and try to guess what is in or out. We just started dumping it in the other bin that they never looked into.

          He was gone pretty quickly after that an

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by healyp ( 1260440 )
        Second this, the only place to return CFLs for us is the Home Depot. The municipal transfer station doesn't accept hazardous waste, which they consider CFLs. They do a free county-wide recycling day ONCE A YEAR that you have to drive to in another town, but even still they don't accept CFLs.

        • Second this, the only place to return CFLs for us is the Home Depot. The municipal transfer station doesn't accept hazardous waste, which they consider CFLs. They do a free county-wide recycling day ONCE A YEAR that you have to drive to in another town, but even still they don't accept CFLs.

          And HD only accepts small CFL bulbs, not the long ones (2-3ft plus) that they also sell; at least that was the case recently when I had to replace some shop light bulbs and bought the replacements at HD and then tried to return for recycle the old ones.

          • Second this, the only place to return CFLs for us is the Home Depot. The municipal transfer station doesn't accept hazardous waste, which they consider CFLs. They do a free county-wide recycling day ONCE A YEAR that you have to drive to in another town, but even still they don't accept CFLs.

            And HD only accepts small CFL bulbs, not the long ones (2-3ft plus) that they also sell; at least that was the case recently when I had to replace some shop light bulbs and bought the replacements at HD and then tried to return for recycle the old ones.

            I have a stack of long florescent bulbs in an unused corner of my garage, old bulbs from the fixture over my worktable, collecting there since I moved to this house in the early '90s. I never did figure out where to take them or how to safely dispose of them. I guess it'll be my descendants' problem.

            • Second this, the only place to return CFLs for us is the Home Depot. The municipal transfer station doesn't accept hazardous waste, which they consider CFLs. They do a free county-wide recycling day ONCE A YEAR that you have to drive to in another town, but even still they don't accept CFLs.

              And HD only accepts small CFL bulbs, not the long ones (2-3ft plus) that they also sell; at least that was the case recently when I had to replace some shop light bulbs and bought the replacements at HD and then tried to return for recycle the old ones.

              I have a stack of long florescent bulbs in an unused corner of my garage, old bulbs from the fixture over my worktable, collecting there since I moved to this house in the early '90s. I never did figure out where to take them or how to safely dispose of them. I guess it'll be my descendants' problem.

              You are doing the same disposal strategy I am.

              • I have a stack of long florescent bulbs in an unused corner of my garage, old bulbs from the fixture over my worktable, collecting there since I moved to this house in the early '90s. I never did figure out where to take them or how to safely dispose of them. I guess it'll be my descendants' problem.

                You are doing the same disposal strategy I am.

                Ditto. I've got that same stack of long fluorescents in my garage. And there they'll stay, I expect....

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by vonart ( 1033056 )
                  Same here. I'm thinking of moving them up into the attic since it's empty. Out of sight, out of mind.

                  • This seems willfully obtuse. If you live anywhere near a city there is a recycling center near you that will accept these. Even if you live 60 miles from a city you still make several trips a year into that city for other reasons. Not taking those old bulbs with you for the 10 minute detour to drop them off is being purposely stubborn.
                     

                    • Re: (Score:1)

                      by vonart ( 1033056 )
                      The tubes are 8 feet long, and I have a small sedan. The fixtures and the spare tubes came with the house. How do you propose I actually get them anywhere? Rent a van?

      • Re:Recycle and bioplastics (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Thursday March 19, 2015 @01:36PM (#49293767)

        > A real recycle program, not one where you have to pay to get the stuff taken away

        Or worse, a recycle program where you have to drive somewhere to drop it off. For instance, currently in my area, although we have curbside recycling for glass and some plastics and cardboard, there's currently no way to recycle CFLs that doesn't involve driving to a recycling center. Besides wasted fuel and emissions, the collateral damage of this is that most people just throw CFLs away and the mercury ends up in landfill. And groundwater.

        Yup. Given the choice of an 80 mile round trip to a location that is only open M-F during normal business hours and tossing them in the trash guess which one gets picked? Ultimately I think one solution would be to require the manufacturer to take back and arrange for recycling or proper disposal. That would add to the upfront cost but eliminate a lot of back end problems. Of course, manufacturers will whine about the cost but I think bottle deposit laws are a good example of what may happen. Bottlers complained but when states tried to take over rte program they resisted because they were taking in more deposit money than they were paying out and spending to run the program.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          Ultimately I think one solution would be to require the manufacturer to take back and arrange for recycling or proper disposal.

          Which would tack on how much to the cost of CFLs? And involve how much carbon emission in the pickup and movement of used CFLs?

          The better solution is to not push ZOMG! GREEN! products which have a bunch of hazardous waste in them.

          I have no idea how many CFLs end up in landfills, but I do sometimes wonder if the environmental cost of that much mercury in the environment is worse th

          • It's even more idiotic when people freak out about the mercury in these bulbs "being released into the environment" as though mercury were some synthesized chemical and not a naturally occurring element. There is no more mercury in the environment after a CFL is thrown out than there was before that CFL was manufactured; true, there was less mercury in the environment for the short time in between, but that murcury wasn't exactly out raping babies before we trapped it in that bulb, was it? What makes people

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by swb ( 14022 )

              Well, I think most hazardous substances that exist in nature usually exist as some kind of stable mineral combination, not as a pure element in concentration.

              Mercury is found as cinnabar in nature, not as the liquid refined metal. The problem with the pure metal is that once in nature it combines with other shit or concentrates in the food chain, which is why its kind of a bad idea.

              • Everything else I've ever read about mercury states that it is not usually found in nature in its elemental form and that cinnabar is the most common, but not only, form in which mercury exists in nature. Other naturally occurring forms of mercury include mercuric sulphide, mercuric oxide, and mercuric chloride. Additionally, some microorganisms produce organic mercury, most typically methylmercury, in the presence of mercury salts (but not in the presence of elemental mercury).

                Mercuric chloride, which oc

        • Ultimately I think one solution would be to require the manufacturer to take back and arrange for recycling or proper disposal. That would add to the upfront cost but eliminate a lot of back end problems. Of course, manufacturers will whine about the cost but I think bottle deposit laws are a good example of what may happen.

          Yep. Bottled drinks cost a nickel more each, and the effort to return them is hardly offset by the cost, so I wind up throwing them away in the trash. A good solution to a recycling problem, I think.

      • Re:Recycle and bioplastics (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Gavagai80 ( 1275204 ) on Thursday March 19, 2015 @02:05PM (#49293981) Homepage

        Curbside recycling doesn't help much either when it's just for homeowners, as it seems to be most places. The homeowners around here have their recycling bins, but none of the apartments I've lived in have ever had any recycling options for any materials.

      • Indeed. Pennsylvania has a law that prohibits throwing electronics into the trash. While there are places that will take it for free, you have to either scrounge every newspaper, bulletin board, and poorly designed "community" website to find out when these "recycling fairs" are, or you have to pay someone to take it. Staples will also take some things. Either way, YOU have to drive somewhere to get rid of it. Until the ruling class stops imposing the cost of their feel-good activities on the poor and

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Gizan ( 3984275 )
          In california, you have to pay an e-waste fee when you purchase ANY electronics item. Also, you have to PAY a e-waste fee to throw it away, except for the, once every 2 moths its free to throw it away at designated centers between the hours of X and X when you KNOW you wont make it...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I can one-up you. Our city has a curbside hazardous waste program. They tout it on flyers, bus benches, and everything else. They tell you how wonderfully convenient it is not to have to drive your used motor oil or batteries to a hazardous waste roundup (which only happens twice a year somewhere in the County). The kicker comes when you actually try to use the service: "No, we don't come out to your house unless you have more than 1 ton of waste" they'll tell you on the phone.

        Fuckin' pricks.

        • Take your used motor oil and batteries (I'm assuming you're speaking of the automotive type) to your local auto-parts store. They will accept both (and, in the case of batteries, quote you a price for the new battery that includes you returning the old one). Oil collections are free, not sure about batteries, though I suspect it'd be free since they'd make cash selling back the lead.

    • Re:Recycle and bioplastics (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday March 19, 2015 @12:55PM (#49293409)

      A real recycle program

      That would be good. Even better would be to reduce the amount of plastic we use in the first place. When I receive shipments from Amazon, the packaging usually weighs more than the products. This is necessary because of the workers at UPS/USPS/FedEx that drop, throw, and step on the packages. When we replace these idiots with robots, a lot less packaging will be needed.

      • Re:Recycle and bioplastics (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Thursday March 19, 2015 @01:41PM (#49293817)

        A real recycle program

        That would be good. Even better would be to reduce the amount of plastic we use in the first place. When I receive shipments from Amazon, the packaging usually weighs more than the products. This is necessary because of the workers at UPS/USPS/FedEx that drop, throw, and step on the packages. When we replace these idiots with robots, a lot less packaging will be needed.

        In fairness to FedEx their sorting operation in Memphis already use robots that weigh and measure each package to minimize the forces used during sorting. the drivers, well that's another story. Given Amazon's size and volume manufacturers could package stuff more reasonably. Do I really need a tamper proof sealed plastic case for an item I buy through Amazon? Amazon already packages some of their Amazon labeled stuff more sanely in cardboard and I wish they'd push manufacturers to do something similar for what they sell via Amazon.

      • I have this problem with must stuff shipped UPS ground. Not so much with Fedex or USPS. USPS is more likely to lose my package than damage it. I have had Netflix envelopes show up 10 months late (and undamaged!)

        • I have stuff damaged by USPS all the time, thanks almost entirely to having a small delivery box. My neighborhood uses 25-year-old cluster boxes, and there are 9 houses to a cluster. Each house gets something about a foot deep and 6x4" across. The carrier will always try to cram something into the box rather than walking it to the door. Worse, the boxes each have a quarter-inch of rim around them, so something the carrier can insert easily from their side may be extremely difficult to remove from the ot

  • My $0.02 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday March 19, 2015 @12:42PM (#49293299) Homepage Journal
    20 years ago I got a yellow rain jacket (the trash bag kind) once when on a cruise by Niagra falls. Written on the back in huge block letters was the word "Biodegradable". It is still usable today. I have little trust of biodegradable plastics until I see proof.

    • Re:My $0.02 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday March 19, 2015 @01:01PM (#49293477)

      20 years ago I got a yellow rain jacket ... It is still usable today.

      20 years ago, my house was made of biodegradable wood. It is still usable today.

      Biodegradable doesn't mean it just magically falls apart after a pre-programmed amount of time. It means it will rot under appropriate conditions. Bury your raincoat in your backyard, water well, and then go back and see if it is still there in 20 years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by moeinvt ( 851793 )

        "20 years ago, my house was made of biodegradable wood. It is still usable today."

        +1 Funny
        Accidentally modded -1 Overrated.

        Drat.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by marciot ( 598356 )

        Biodegradable doesn't mean it just magically falls apart after a pre-programmed amount of time.

        Let's get the MPAA involved with this. They can invent a plastic with DRM that make it unusable after a pre-determined amount of time.

      • I think this is a good example of the problem of bad communication and expectation.

        When we are told that something is designed to be biodegradable, we expect it to be gone in a few years at most. But where do we get that expectation from? As a consumer, I've never actually heard a manufacturer say, "My plastic will biodegrade in six months," but somehow even I expected some kind of degradation after a few years.

        So maybe we need some better communication from the people who make the plastics, so that we, the

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          Biodegradable does not mean that something will be gone in a few years. Biodegradable means that certain fungi or bacteria break it apart. If you keep it away from those things it will never biodegrade.

      • 20 years ago, my house was made of biodegradable wood. It is still usable today.

        Yeah. Because it was coated in plastic or some other non-degradable substance.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If a word is not subject to specific regulation by the government, you can safely assume it's a lie.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bws111 ( 1216812 )

        Biogradable, whether defined by the goverment or not, has a specific meaning. If a substance can be broken down by an organism (fungi or bacteria) it is biodegradable. If a substance can be broken down under 'natural' conditions it is compostable, which is not the same thing.

        I don't know how this guy stores his poncho, but chances are it has not been subjected to the bacteria or fungus needed to break it down. That in no way implies 'lying' by the manufacturer, just that the guy doesn't know what biodeg

  • Sequester them (Score:2, Insightful)

    by doconnor ( 134648 )

    Why would we want our oil produces biodegrading into carbon dioxide when they can be easily sequestered in the ground?

    They are spending a great deal of money trying to sequester the carbon dioxide from our other oil produces in the ground.

    • Why would we want our oil produces sequestered in the ground when they can be easily burned for heating?
      • Some plastics produce toxic fumes when burned. I'd guess that others produce residues like wood burning creates creosote.

        • At sufficiently high temperatures most plastics don't produce toxic fumes. Only PVC and fluorcarbohydrates produce toxic fumes. However, I am talking about somewhere over 1000C. Not your average stove. Assuming a clean O2 source you'd have only CO2 and H2O in the exhaust. With air you'd also have various NO compounds, due to oxygen and nitrogen in a high temperature environment.

          Wood doesn't produce creosote at these temperatures either. Only fall ash, fly ash, CO2 and H2O (and probably NO compounds). Fall a

  • Sunlight, not darkness (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm sure these idiots know the proper way to biodegrade plastic is expose it to UV. Which makes me wonder what their motivation was for testing in other conditions? Granted, these are "normal" disposal methods, but if you read the products they usually say "biodegradable in sunlight".

    So crying that they don't biodegrade when buried is like buying solar panels and then complaining they don't produce power at night.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by nobuddy ( 952985 )

      BIODEGRADABLE --- in 300pt font across the entire object

      only in UV light --- in .0000015 point font on the bottom, on back, half covered by a seam, color matched to the material.

      That's why. they are pushing them as biodegradable but not being very forthcoming on the limitations of that ability.

    • Solar panels can produce power at night. All you need to do is install them on a rotary axis and move them 90 degrees every 6 hours.

    • I'm sure these idiots know the proper way to biodegrade plastic is expose it to UV. Which makes me wonder what their motivation was for testing in other conditions? Granted, these are "normal" disposal methods, but if you read the products they usually say "biodegradable in sunlight".

      So crying that they don't biodegrade when buried is like buying solar panels and then complaining they don't produce power at night.

      Well, in fairness, buried in a landfill is probably the most common use case. "Biodegradable if spread out in an even layer across desert sands with not too much wind so they'll stay put" is probably not a practical use case. That the biodegradable-ness provided by the additives isn't really practical in most cases is useful information, I think.

      Unless -- I just thought of this -- the intention of the additives is to hasten the degrade of coke bottles left on the side of the road. I guess that might be a

  • So even it goes to the landfill and turns into dirt, then you have heavily contaminated dirt that will never be used as dirt. It's still sitting in the landfill with practically the same volume and mass.
  • It seems that sunlight will degrade plastics. Maybe not quick, but quicker than things that aren't outside in the sun and weather.
  • fire the engineers, hire good sales people.

  • I keep seeing "oxo-biodegradable" on plastic bags but the problem is that it can be either regular plastic with additives [wikipedia.org] (which is the worst idea possible - breaking plastic down into smaller pieces just means easier ground and water contamination) or cellulose.

    What we need is biodegradable plastics made from cellulose and we need to be able to know which is which.

  • For something they say takes hundreds of years to breakdown.

    On the other hand we are told about the plastics problem yet in the ocean they are surprised the plastics are breaking down as fast as they are. http://news.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
  • Just drop it in a bayou! That's what bayoudegradeable is. (needless to say I love this topic) Many folks in south Louisiana throw washing machines, boat parts and engines, enemies, etc in the bayou in hopes it will degrade. Would work for these plastics, too! However, I am not seriously suggesting that this junk get dumped in our bayous.... just a funny way to tout my userID.
  • because they break down to tiny particles in sunlight, and if those end up in water, they will keep many toxins like insecticides and fungicides in the food chain for much longer. Normally that stuff sediments, but in the presence of tiny plastic flakes from ox-degradable foils those toxic molecules will attach themselves to the plastic and stay suspended in water, to be digested by all aquatic lifeforms. This is long known, and burying these plastics is actually the second-best you can do to them after inc
  • I just don't understand why the US won't just burn the vast majority of its waste for power. Numerous other countries do it. Even burning plastic isn't particularly bad for the environment, especially when compared with the alternatives. And with only one exception (aluminum), recycling is just a energy sink.

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