Leslie HartyUsername: LadyMaverick |
Location
Monroe, NC, United States
Role
Packaging DistributorJob Title
PresidentCompany
Maverick EnterprisesComments
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Compostability; not biodegradability
I do not think Dell has done its homework on availability of composts that would be able to handle this product.A product that needs higher heat to break down requires commercial and municipal composting. (ASTM 6400) The last time I counted them, there were around 100 in the entire US. So what we have is just another product ending up in the landfill where it will remain hundreds of years. There is no curbside pickup of this product. It is not recyclable with mainstream plastics. They should have gone with a landfill biodegradable plastic until the day there are more commercial composts, which I believe will happpen in 20 years.
Compostability; not biodegradability
I do not think Dell has done its homework on availability of composts that would be able to handle this product.A product that needs higher heat to break down requires commercial and municipal composting. (ASTM 6400) The last time I counted them, there were around 100 in the entire US. So what we have is just another product ending up in the landfill where it will remain hundreds of years. There is no curbside pickup of this product. It is not recyclable with mainstream plastics. They should have gone with a landfill biodegradable plastic until the day there are more commercial composts, which I believe will happpen in 20 years.
additives
Sherri: Actually plastics are made from natural gas, a by-product of the creation of petroleum into gasoline. ( Only 1.5% of all petroleum used in the US ends up in plastic.) When it comes down into additives that go into making a plastic biodegradable, there are basically oxy-degradables and other additives such as Biotech, Eco-Pure, Sierra, ECM, and Enso Bottles. I would not even consider an oxy as most trash ends up in a landfill and they will not break down there as there is no heat or sunlight there to do so. So gather the data on other additives and ask for independent lab results proving that they do break down in landfills (ASTM 5511 or ASTM 5526). Double check the lab results to make sure they use the load factor they recommend in the lab studies. It does no good to buy an additive that recommends a 1.1% load factor and the tests are done on a 25% load factor. The good thing about plastics that biodegrade in landfills is they emit methane which is captured and made into fuel in 75% of all landfills. It is $.03-.045/kilowatt hour vs solar which is $.60/kilowaat hour vs wind which is $.11/kilowatt hour. I wish we could get people to recycle more. But with an average of 8% of all plastics being recycled, a landfill biodegradable product is the best answer.
What you say is very true- do
What you say is very true- do not believe all you read on the internet. For example, you state that the Larry's Beans bag does not have a degassing valve for CO2. Wrong. It has one. As for the adhesives- they are biodegradable. The inks are water based. I am trying to partner up with someone to mdevelop a biodegradable valve. I have already developed biodegradable labels. As for false claims, remember back in the 1980's when a can liner claimed biodegradability and the FTC checked it and found it to be false? The same applies here. If these bags were not tested and certified ASTM 5511 for landfill biodegradability, then I'd say yes, there is a problem. But, they are certified ASTM 5511. It might take longer than 9 months which is the MINIMUM amount of time, but the longest is about 5 years which beats 400 years a normal plastic takes to break down in a landfill.
PLA replacement
Please contact me at sales@maverickent.net. I can get you a biodegradable bag with ziplocks that will be a lot more sustainable than a PLA bag with a liner. Also I can get you OTR's that are much better than PLA bags.
All that says is that it will
All that says is that it will not compost in 90 days as "it is generally recommended that materials used in composting degrade in 90 days, it would apprear that ECM treated plastics are not ideally suited for composting". So if you take that statement one step further, many of the products that are certified ASTM 6400 would not be candidates for composting as they take 180 days, not 90 days. This is the opinion of the company doing the tests OWS. If you look on page 3 it states that " the results of the aerobic degradation tests indicate that, in time, plastics produced using ECM pellets will biodegrade in aerobic conditions." So I am afraid you didn't catch that statement and therefore plastic with ECM is compostable.
You would use a bag made from
You would use a bag made from corn that uses more fossil fuels to make than a plastic bag? That is insane! We are going to renewable resources to get away from the use of fossil fuels. Unfortuantely PLA uses more fossil fuels than a plastic bag. They say they are moving away from corn, but until they do so, it is not a valid choice. That might take years!! There are products made from tree pulp, sugar cane, saw grasses, etc. that are much better options. PLA is misleading the public when it says it does use less fossil fuels when they turn around and and buy energy credits. If the product I use takes 5 years to biodegrade, that is a lot quicker than regular plastics and PLA take when dumped into a landfill- they take 400 yrs minimum. PLA has only 100 locations in the US where it can be safely composted, so it is being dumped in landfills. Independent testing has been done on my plastic with the additive showing it does biodegrade in landfills, so this not a claim, it is a fact. PLA is not backyard compostable at all. Read the article in Smithsonian Magazine, Aug 2006. The Environmental Defense Org stated that PLA is creating more global warming than gasoline. (Nov, 2007). 40 % of Louisiana's fishermen have lost their jobs since 2001 due to the dead zone caused by nitrogen used for fertilizing corn. Smithfield Foods went into Chaper 11 this year because of the high cost of corn, not the recession according to their President. We have now reached 1 Billion people in the world going hungry in 2008. Why? Food costs are up 24% since 2006.That is an 11% increase in one year. A French professor of Bio-Polymer Science, Stephan Gilbert, stated that the use of certain bioplastics that can be used for food sources come with "unwelcome ethical consequences" due the fact they cause increases in the cost of food. Also, please note:my plastic biodegrades anaerobically in landfills where it will create methane. 75% of all landfills in the US now harvest this and make it into a cheap source of energy that is cheaper than wind power. PLA and normal plastic are just sitting there filling up landfills. Mine can be recycled with normal plastic. PLA cannot.So take 3 minutes to cut up the Larry's Beans bag before you compost it. You have to do the same for your newspapers don't you?
I did not say it would
I did not say it would compost or biodegrade in 90 days. Where are you getting this? Please reread the report. It does say that it passed the tests for composting and that it can be called therefore be called compostable.
Larry's Beans Coffee bag
When you put your newspapers in your compost, do you just dump them in or do you cut them up? You are supposed to cut them up. If you had a head of iceberg lettuce, would you drop the entire head in, or break it up? The same is true of all composting. You just don't drop tree branches into a compost and expect them to break down. What you did wrong was not cutting the bag up so biota could easily get to it, just like you do with any paper item. They never made a claim that the labels or the valves were landfill biodegradable/compostable. I think you need to read up on the proper way to compost items. The important fact to remember is that the films that make up the bag have passed ASTM 5511 and ASTM 5338.98. If you look them both up, you will see that neither have any times associated with them. They will biodegrade in landfills and compost in backyard composts depending on how active the biota are. However, it sounds like you are not following composting protocols. Which is better for the environment is a no-brainer, however. Yes it does use petroleum. Only 1.5% of all fossil fuels in the US per year end up as plastic. PLA uses MORE fossil fuels than plastic in its development. It buys energy credits to by-pass this fact. And the last time I looked at the BPI website, there were about 100 places in the ENTIRE US to safely compost them. So people are using corn for plastic and ethanol which drives up the cost of food and they end up in landfills where they will last 400 years. GMO's are killing Monarch butterflies and other good insects. The excessive fertilizing of corn with nitrogen has created a Dead Zone the size of the state of New Jersey in the Gulf Of Mexico. So you tell me, which is better: a bag that is certified to compost and break down in a landfill or one that uses our precious food resources and is not sustainable and will more than likely not be composted where it can safely break down?
What's your phone number?
What's your phone number?