Biodegradability is the New Black

Julio F. Campos

Disposable products such as plates, cups, and cutlery have been sold due to its practicality as a use-and-dispose option to doing the dishes.

Although the idea was born back in 1908 to avoid the disease dissemination in hospitals due to sharing common recipients, it was after World War II and the development of the plastic industry that the disposable products reached the general public.

Originally used for packaging, it was not long that the disposability concept reached other daily used products as we know today.

In a world where, unfortunately, the time has become a most valuable commodity, the single-use idea was easy to sell, fastly getting public acceptance.

It was not only until the recent years that the problem of such "practicality" has become known by the public.

Although not new for environmental scientists, the plastic problem got popular worldwide attention after the media in recent years exposed the Great Pacific Garbage Patches (which was discovered back in 1988) problem.

Plastic, or the problems of plastic use, became a pop issue and suddenly mankind needs to solve it, at any costs and as fast as possible.

The issues of trying to rush into finding solutions for a problem is that it will generate unknow problems due to poorly life cycle assessments and, most worrying, sometimes an absolute lack of how nature works and deals with waste.

Enter the Stage: Biodegradability

Known for a long time, the concept of the material degradation by the action of biological actors is not new.

However, the technological development in recent years, bringing forward biodegradable polymers to the reach of the general public brought back the attention to the concept.

Nowadays we can see a boom of innovative solutions for disposable products never seen before and, thanks to the popularization of the plastic problem, many are focused on the use of no plastic at all.

The public is being directed to ditch the old disposable products for new, nature-friendly, biodegradable ones.

But on what grounds?

To solve the pollution problem. Seems simple. But it's not.

There are three major problems that the general public, and it seems that many innovators are not aware of about biodegradability.

Time

It takes time, and how long will take is related to how much needs to be degraded.

We can see many biodegradable innovations adds publicize how a product will degrade within a few days or weeks. That's true for a few of units but as its use, and amount disposed of, escalates, more time is needed to degrade it simply due to the fact that biodegrading microorganisms need to be able to reach the product surface at first place. As well water, oxygen and other conditions that allow a complete and proper decomposition of the material.

When the biodegradability time of different materials is presented in many tables like this , it refers to the material of which the product is made in ideal conditions, but not the amount of it nor the conditions found in landfills.

Also, no matter how natural the product is, it still can be a pollutant if disposed at a larger rate than the environment is able to cope with, resulting in its build up in the ecosystem.

Therefore, the idea that a biodegradable product is ok to dispose of since it is, well, biodegradable, and that the environment can deal with it misleading for it's the amount disposed of that will define how long will take for it to degrade and, as we will see, what will be its byproducts.

Methane

Methane (CH4) is a Greenhouse Gas well known to have a higher influence that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the global warming as it's up to 36 times more effective into trapping heat than CO2.

Although it is removed much faster from the atmosphere, within a decade, than CO2, its higher Global Warming Potentials makes its release something to be taken seriously.

The ideal biodegradation situation results in the CO2 release, the conditions inside a landfill can be a far cry from ideal, usually, lack the oxygen needed for a proper degradation. As a result, and landfill are well know for that, we have a massive methane release from organic decomposing materials.

Ideally, the methane can be captured and burned to produce energy, releasing CO2 instead. However, despite the fact that carbon is being emitted nonetheless, not only large amounts of methane leaks from the landfill but it takes few years until the amount of methane produced be economically worth of collecting.

The Biodegradability Technology.

As exposed, biodegradability needs adequate conditions to occur, which are not present in most situations.

That where we need the biodigesters. Biodigesters create adequate conditions for a proper degradation, but unlike a natural environment it requires an input of energy and materials and has its own footprint.

What it's not said is that many biodegradable products only biodegrade in the biodigesters, not being biodegraded in the natural environment as advertised.

The Old Way

Before the development of disposable products, mankind hadn't access to all these facilities of easy to dispose of cups, cutlery, plates. For over 10.000 years!!

How could we do it so far?

Use, wash, reuse, repeat.

And big news, that can be done with plastic too. But suddenly that became unpractical.

The most attentive reader must have realized that the new wave of biodegradable products is not dealing with the real issue here. The problem is not about what it's made of, it's how it's used.

It's ok to use a plastic cup. It's not ok to use it for only one minute.

Biodegradable products came as the solution to solve the plastic problem with the same appeal that caused the plastic problem, practicability.

Buy-use-dispose.

The fact that we are still dealing with old landfills contamination due to yet decomposing organic materials is, however, not an interesting fact to be disclosed.

Biodegradables are here to stay. They are cheap. They save the corporations the problem of dealing with the post use/reuse issues of their products. They are practical for the rushed daily life.

Just as plastic disposable products were back in the day.

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