Education on biodegradable packaging key
LIKE HUGH Gray, Nigel Hoyow, director of Flexi Pak, has also invested in research into the suitability of biodegradable packaging for the local market, and both companies are up to speed in terms of the far-reaching implications for their businesses as well as the environment, if the law comes into effect. Both men have reservations about the State’s capability to implement such a ban with any degree of effectiveness at this time.
“It’s not a magic wand that you raise, and yes, it will stop flooding immediately if the bags are biodegradable. Biodegradable stuff can be engineered to what the customer wants. So if I need my stuff to be in the warehouse for two years for whatever reason, then the biodegradable element can be engineered to give you a two-year lifespan,” he told The Gleaner. “We don’t have any parameters to work it, and there is much more to it than meets the eye.”
Gray agreed with the need for much more public awareness on the issue.
“This whole thing of dealing with recycling is where the Government needs to go – the education of the people to say the damage that is being done is because of how we really handle the products. Does Bureau of Standard Jamaica or any of the entities that would be set up to monitor these things have the necessary wherewithal to ensure that people don’t just write on the product that it is biodegradable? Can they really check it to see if what they are saying is true?”
Hoyow underscored the importance of educating everyone on the debate about biodegradable packaging.
“Nobody, not even me at this stage, understands the true ramifications of the environment after you biodegrade the stuff. Because you fragment it and get rid of it into little fragments of dust, which is supposed to end up as biomass, which is basically dust in layman terms, but the dust is not a compostable dust, so it will still be there in a polymer form – not dirt as we know it, earth.”