Is that really biodegradable?
Even ‘green packaging’ only breaks down under very strict And specific conditions. By
There’s a perception that product packaging labelled as “biodegradable” will simply degrade in a matter of months, reducing litter and making for good compost. That is not always the case. In fact, it can be worse for the environment.
“If a consumer buys a biodegradable plastic bag and then throws it in their general waste once they’re done with it, they’re not being any more sustainable than the person who buys a regular plastic bag and puts it in their general waste. It all ends up in the same place,” says environmental biotechnology researcher Dr Rob van Hille, director of the Moss Group, a company that works with clients to develop strategies towards achieving sustainable outcomes.
“The people selling these products are let off far too easy when it comes to their marketing. Some of these products are marketed as the green, Earth-friendly, sustainable alternative, but if they’re not educating the consumer about how they need to handle that product to make sure that it’s actually beneficial, then it’s just greenwashing.”
What is biodegradable packaging?
“‘Biodegradable’ essentially refers to any material that can be broken down by bacteria and fungi in such a way that it changes its chemical composition,” Van
Hille explains. Mostly, the material degrades into water, gas and other materials.
Although there isn’t always a timeframe associated with biodegradability, plastics labelled as biodegradable, for example, degrade faster than conventional plastics; the latter can take decades to break down into fragments, and centuries for those fragments to degrade into gases and minerals, all of which might not necessarily be good for the environment.
Biodegradable plastics, on the other hand, hold the promise of degrading faster, especially under the right conditions, and this should reduce litter and make it much less likely that the plastic ends up in the ocean, endangering marine life.
The degradation of biodegradable plastics, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that the material will be converted into good-quality compost. And although some biodegradable plastic is made out of plant sources, some can also be made out of fossil fuel by-products and the processes they go through can be just as harmful.
In the case of SA, the resin required to produce biodegradable plastics is not locally available and has to be imported, further adding to the harmful impact of biodegradable plastics on the environment through an enlarged carbon footprint.
Compostable vs biodegradable
Compostables are a class of biodegradable materials to which a timeframe and conditions are specified for degradation.
Van Hille says: “They need to adhere to specific conditions in terms of both the extent to which they get broken down and the timeframe under which they do that, and there are a number of international standards that prescribe these. There are also differences between industrially compostable and home compostable products.” If compostable plastic ends up in a regular waste bin... in a landfill, where the lack of oxygen during its degradation would likely lead to the release of methane, a greenhouse gas.
Greenwashing, anyone?
Susanne Karcher, a cofounder of the African Circular Economy Network and managing member of Envirosense, says: “The crux of the matter is that most of what is marketed as 100% compostable or biodegradable only degrades under very strict conditions.”
“It’s not about throwing it onto the street and it magically disappears; it needs industrial composting.”
She adds that while some retailers might work towards adding biodegradable carrier bags and punt them as a sustainable solution, that is only the “tip of the iceberg”, as many of the items on their shelves are wrapped in regular plastic.
Marketing biodegradable plastic “also diverts from the real message, which is that we must find ways to reduce plastic consumption. “People are not having that debate because they’re feeling good about consuming again because they [incorrectly] think biodegradable plastic is not harmful to the environment,” Karcher warns.
The way she sees it, the solution is nothing short of a cultural and systemic change, from pushing manufacturers to redesign and rethink packaging, to coming up with new ways of delivering goods and services.
“We acknowledge that plastic is here to stay, but we need to ... build a circular economy around it,” says Karcher.
Until such systemic change takes hold and becomes the norm, and manufacturers choose to continue down the path of biodegradable plastic, Van Hille adds that “there needs to be a large-scale system in place to ensure that the biodegradable or compostable packaging is collected and goes where it needs to. And, at the moment, most communities don’t have that in place.”