Over the years, we’ve come to realize the many negative effects of excessive plastic production and consumption. We now have our sewers, seas, and oceans filled with plastic. Meanwhile, an alternative to plastic has been garnering attention to the general public, and that alternative is bioplastic.
The name itself evokes nature, the packaging is often colored green, the labels highlight how it was made from corn or compostable. There’s something sweetly seductive looking at a bioplastic cup and imagining it ending up in a huge compost pile where it will natural[ly] degrade over a few weeks or months into fertilizer that can be used to grow more corn. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And it yet it’s mostly a dream, sold by the companies who make the plastic and perpetuated by our broken recycling system.
When done right, bioplastic could be the key towards reducing carbon emissions by up to 3.8 gigatons by 2050. However, it seems that the world does not know what that “do right” means.
More details about this over at Gizmodo.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: Scott Bauer/ Wikimedia Commons)
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ban all straws, donald blumphf
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