Biodegradable Plastic Bags!
2008-03-12 13:50:00.0
AUTHOR: Judy Turner
An article in the Whakatane Beacon recently caught my attention. It featured a local man John Fell who is importing biodegradable plastic bags into NZ and supplying retailers with them for the same cost as normal plastic shopping bags!
Unable to resist the temptation, I rang him and organised to meet wioth him to learn more about this amazing new technology.
What I learned was this ....
There are two main types of biodegradable plastics; oxo-biodegradeable, which are also recyclable and hydro-biodegradable which can not be recycled as they contaminate the new plastic product.
Mr Fell then invited me to a diiner in Wellington with the Keep New Zealand Beautiful Trust. There I met a number of other business people who also supply biodegrabale products as substitutes for many of our 'one-use/throw-away' options.
Last week British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on British businesses to cut sharply the 13 billion plastic shopping bags that are used and wasted each year in Britain.
Many retailers in Britain like NZ are offering life-long bags and in-store recycling points for used bags and that is good, but maybe part of the solution is to look at the range of bio-degradable options that apparently cost no more than conventional packaging but will not add to the decades of plastic waste we now contend with.
Of course it is not just retailers that need to be committed to common sense environmental action. All of us need to play our part. Sorting our household rubbish into the recycling bin and remembering to put the new life-long shopping bag in to the boot of the car so that we are never tempted to resort to plastic bags that are non- biodegradable are simple habits that are capable of making a huge difference if we all do our bit.
I think it is time we started using plastic products that don’t out live us and our grandchildren. I can think of a lot better things to include in the legacy we leave future generations than “plastic soup”.