By Kathleen Boylan
"If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish" - Jonas Salk.
About a year ago I was visiting pineapple and sugar cane farms in the Veracruz area of Mexico. We were there to see how they were using compost to increase crop yields and the water retention of soil and reduce their use of chemical fertilizers. Though I was intrigued by their farming practices, I spent a great deal of time worrying about bugs! On one of the nights I found a praying mantis on my husbands back. I practically lost it. My bug phobia follows me wherever I go. To this day I suffer from post traumatic shock from living in Africa where I was surrounded by all sorts of bugs. A few months after when we came back to North America our dog came home covered with ticks from a visit in Minnesota. Until then I had never seen an engorged tick. So I courageously took over the task of looking for them as my husband cut the overgrown grass. When I came upon the first engorged tick I lost all composure and began the weirdest out of body uncontrollable freak out screaming dance I have ever done - with my sons and neighbours looking on. Lucky for my husband, he is a stand up comic and this is just more material for his craft.
So clearly I am not the usual candidate for a save the bugs campaign. Regardless of my incredible fear of bugs - I know my place on this planet in relation to them.We need them to create our soils. Without our soils we simply will have no food to eat. So I take great interest in the continued claims of green products that are entering the market and the potential effect on the bugs and soil.
There are four kinds of products in my opinion. Something you can pass on from generation to generation; something you can compost; something the market can reliably recycle; and the things that need to be land-filled. Clearly we want to do everything we can to reduce what ends up in our landfills.
The anti-compostable product lobby group (often manufacturers and sellers of plastic products) claim that there are little or no systems for collecting and composting products. I find this perspective ironic. The plastic industry had no problem launching itself and profiting for decades. Still today, even with the grass root support for recycling, this industry produces more plastic (not less) and has still not created reliable local markets for recycling most plastics. I guess the idea of sharing the world of sales is worrisome.
Composting is a new form of waste management that can potentially divert 50% (or more) waste from landfills. And in contrast to recycling - it can be done right in a community. Recycling depends, for most communities, on shipping out what we collect away from our communities. So let's forget the 'there is no composting available' as an argument against compostable alternatives. Instead lobby for recognizable standards to ensure products are compostable and support for implementing composting.
The best plastic for a reliable recycling market are HDPE and PET. These plastics are considered a quality high grade polyethylene. They are great because they can be used to create other plastic products and there is a reliable market for recycling them. Other plastics namely #3-7 are considered to be of a lesser grade and the demand for recycling them into something else is very fickle. At present many communities are stock piling these plastics with hopes of eventually shipping them to Asia. This is simply not a sustainable model for dealing with our 'waste'. This is why compostable products are becoming a threat to the plastic industry.
Conventional plastics are made from non-renewable resources like petroleum and natural gas. The molecular structure of these raw materials are altered so significantly that the carbon bonds of the various plastics are one of the strongest type of bonds that can be created - something called a covalent bond. A higher plastic is created when the molecules are hugging each other very closely to create a chain. The lower grade plastics have the same molecules, with the same strong covalent bonds but the molecules are holding hands rather than hugging each other. This makes the lower grade plastics more pliable and the higher grade plastics more rigid.
The strength of the covalent bond in the formation of plastic is also the reason why plastic takes such a long time to break down in nature. The molecular structure is not recognized by nature. Certain plastics will eventually start to fall apart (and you can see this on beaches). However this is not to be equated with the covalent bonds breaking. Lower grade plastics have a weaker chain (they are holding hands not hugging) as such it is not uncommon to find a plastic bottle or container on a beach that is partially degraded. This does not mean that is a good thing.
Certified compostable products are different. They are made in different ways then conventional plastic. Their molecular structures are also different. In a natural environment, in particular a composting environment, where there is humidity, heat, oxygen and microbial activity, the bonds of the molecules (not the chain) will be destabilized and carbon will be available to the microorganism as a food source. Mother nature recognizes these as part of her natural world and utilizes it as a sustainable energy source that also allows her to proliferate and support further life.
The other bonus is that composting can be done anywhere. We do not need to stock pile our stocks to send them to Asia. We can do composting on a large scale and remove close to 50% of what heads to landfills in our communities. But! we must ensure that products entering into composting programs are certified as compostable to protect our insect world.
Numerous plastic manufacturers of the lower grade plastics (the ones that do not have reliable recycling markets) are now adding chemical additives to their plastic manufacturing process. They call these products 'biodegradable'. Make no mistake these plastics have the same strong covalent bonds as before. However what happens is the chain of molecules is made more unstable because of the chemical additive. What happens is that the plastic eventually shatters into very small pieces.
Many proponents of 'biodegradable' products claim that their product is green. They will state that it biodegrades in a landfill or that it composts. (In some cases this product can be 'composted' by bacteria found in sewage sludge. One such bacteria that breaks down these plastics also causes infection in humans.) It should NEVER go in a compost program Some of these manufacturers will even site ASTM standards that seem like impressive references. Often these are simply the reference for tests or standards of practice and should not be confused with ASTMD 6400 for compostability.
It's either plastic the same old same old or its compostable. There is no in-between.
Kathleen M. Boylan is the founder and owner of The Waste Reduction Store and Bless This Planet. Kathleen is a speaker on making sense of green claims. A savvy business woman, Kathleen is also a long time environmentalist with international experience in Africa, Asia and Central America. Kathleen built her green import and export business from the ground up. She now trains others on how to source and market green products in an ethical way and promotes the need for businesses to create compost. Kathleen lives in Winnipeg Canada with her two sons and stand-up comic husband, Dan Licoppe. She can be reached through: http://www.wastereductionstore.com or http://www.blessthisplanet.net.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kathleen_Boylan
http://EzineArticles.com/?Biodegradable,-Compostable,-Degradable---Oh-My&id=3924669
No comments:
Post a Comment