What does biodegradable really mean? – Webber
PROFESSOR MONA Webber, director of the Centre for Marine Sciences in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, believes there is need for further clarity of what is meant by the term ‘biodegradable’.
“It’s not clear whether the additive that they say they are putting into the plastic is just going to make it fragment – where you don’t have these big pieces of bottles and so. If it is fragments and these break into smaller bits of plastic, it’s going to be very bad for the environment, extremely bad,” she opined, pointing out that plastic is a polymer. This is a substance that has a molecular structure built up chiefly or completely from a large number of similar units bonded together, such as many synthetic organic materials used as plastics and resins.
“What we’re not sure is whether ‘biodegradable’ means it changes to something other than plastic. Is it an organic material that the plastic is being made from? No,” the director of the Discovery Bay Marine Lab said in answering her own question, then going on to elaborate.
“Because that’s what ‘biodegradable’ really means. It’s something that is organic in its composition. If it’s still plastic and it’s just going to fragment into smaller pieces so we don’t see the big, ugly plastic, it’s bad for the environment. It’s still bad, and perhaps worse because it then gets small enough to be incorporated into our food. It gets into organisms much easier when it’s very small.”