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Follow on Google News |  Eco Footprints Stamping On Good IntentionsCorporate firms far and wide are pontificating to allabout how green they are and how many trees, birds and babies they are saving buy introducing their new "eco" products to us.
By: Robert Daniel It is astonishing just how many companies are singly handedly saving us from destruction from our nasty consumerism, boo, hiss. Trading on ones green ethics, particularly when there are little is pretty bad form in my book and I feel firms are simply not thinking about the consequences of their actions when moving from one type of product to another, only thinking about marketing themselves as a green, environmentally friendly firm. One of the popular "green" Polylactide is a biodegradable made from natural resources, such as corn starch (in the USA) or sugarcanes (rest of world). Although PLA has been around for a while, it has only been of commercial interest recently, in light of its biodegradability. As well as being used to line the inside of paper cups in place of the plastic lining more commonly used PLA is in use in plastic glasses, plastic cutlery, carrier bags, food packaging, all manner of catering disposables and even nappies. These new "biodegradable" One of the major problems associated with this new PLA paper coffee cup being used at lots of stores and coffee chains all over the planet is that customers are thinking they will biodegrade in their bins when they must be sent to composting facilities or composted at home, planted individuallyand covered by nice warm compost. If these paper coffee cups are just trashed they decompose at the same rate as oil based plastic lined paper coffee cups, that is tens of years Unless people compost their biodegradable cups at home (should they even know they have been given one) there will inevitably be two types of paper cups needing to be sorted through at waste reclamation sites whereas before all waste paper cups could be easily sent for recycling without having to separate them. Moreover once these PLA disposable cups find their way into normal recycling channels (and you cannot visibly tell the difference) it will ruin the entire recycling batch as normal plastic lining on normal paper cups and the natural lining on the biodegradable cups does not mix. One finds the oil on water scenario. Most firms producing, selling or using these cups also seem not to have thought about what was taken from the earth in order to create crops to make this "eco" product. Like bio fuels land once used for production of food is now being used for fields to grow alternatives to plastic and petrol. There are even stories of trees being felled in order to make space to grow the PLA plants. This adds to increased food prices, the effect of which most will have noticed over the last year. There could never be enough available land to fully switch over from our reliance on plastics to enable us to change to using this natural alternative, the world would starve. Whilst we are on the subject of starving people another point to think about regarding these new biodegradable plastic products is that we have spent a long time giving subsidies to farmers in Africa to help them grow crops and stand on their own two feet. Many of the crops these farmers are growing are corn or sugarcane. As we are now growing on mass those same crops for Bio Fuel and alternatives to plastics, lowering the prices, plunging these people back into poverty. There are alternatives that given a little more consideration could do many of the jobs these firms hope to achieve through their use of PLA lined or produced products. Oxo-biodegradable Plastics for example are normal plastics such as polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene to which is added a mixture (d2w additive) that accelerates the breakdown of the structure of the plastic. OBP'swill degrade, then biodegrade, on land or at sea, in the light or the dark, in heat or cold, in whatever timescale is required, leaving no fragments, giving off no methane and leaving no harmful residues. The resultant broken down products are then able to be converted by micro- These Oxo-biodegradable Plastics can now be given shelf life, determined at the point of manufacture Using oxo-biodegradable plastics does not mean they cannot be recycled. Unfortunately plenty of other short sighted green ideas are out there, such as the international burger house that dropped its plastic coffee stirrers and moved to wooden ones in an attempt to be seen as green. Out of fear of being sued for splintering customers lips with their wood stirrers they had the stirrers covered with gelatin (like your prescription capsules). Adding this extra process to the manufacturing process of the stirrers costs considerable time, energy and expense, to the point where the wooden stirrers became more energy intensive than simply using plastic. One other classic example of short sighted greening was the banks saving acres of rainforest by using paperless bank statements, about which I learned on a paper flyer and saw advertised on paper billboards. Plastics are not "bad" as many would have you think, reducing our use of it is an ok idea however we cannot simply replace all plastic with a seemingly greener alternative without considering all the consequences, and certainly not just to be seen to be greening your firm Event Supplies (UK) Ltd 15/17 Devonshire Street Keighley BD21 2BH sales@eventsupplies.co.uk Telephone: 0844 499 5456 # # # Event Supplies distribute a wide range of catering disposables and reusable products including Paper Tablecoverings, Plastic Glasses, Tumblers, Paper cups, Paper plates, Napkins, Cutlery and more. We deliver next day. http://www.eventsupplies.co.uk End
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