wrote:
I need to rant for a moment about compostable and biodegradable VS PLASTIC. Excuse me.
i. biodegradable vs compostable
Both terms relate to organic materials breaking down in a specific environment. However,
biodegradable is a term often misused in advertisements of natural products because it doesn't tell you much and isn't necessarily good for the environment at all. The definition of biodegradable is: "a material is capable of undergoing biological anaerobic or aerobic degradation leading to the production of CO2, H2O, methane, biomass, and mineral salts, depending on the environmental conditions of the process." While this may look good, let's take a look at compostable. A compostable product can be "placed into a composition of decaying biodegradable materials, and eventually turns into a nutrient-rich material." Also known as soil. "It is almost synonymous with “biodegradable”, except it is limited to solid materials and does not refer to liquids."
Compostable defines the place it needs to compost. Biodegradable doesn't and as a thumb rule, that means you can't compost it at home because you won't have the right conditions. It's not even sure facilities that properly biodegrade the product exist in your country and no way of knowing it reaches it properly through your local waste management. The same is with most compostable terms, which makes another rule and that is HOME COMPOSTABLE. That's only time you'll be sure the product you're buying can be composted in your garden, local compost bin or by using Bokashi, etc.
ii. bioplastic and biodegradable plastic
Bioplastic is plastic where the carbon is sourced from corn, wheat, algae, etc. Sources that are considered renewable, but also affects our food availability. All of them are biological masses and therefore let it have the "bio" part as a kind of green check. However, bioplastic is not much better than fossil fuel-based plastics because in the term of polymer behavior there's no difference. It may appear environmentally friendly and even be used as such but it isn't.
Biodegradable plastic is made to break down in compost or landfill where the temperatures are high enough (for most of us this means special facilities). Most of these are not designed to degrade in the ocean. It does not break down until soil, but components as methane, CO2 and HO2.
WHEN YOU CAN'T COMPOST... RECYCLE?
Sounds like a good point to start, was it not for the fact that most plastic isn't being recycled. In fact, only 9% of the world's produced plastic is assumed recycled (2018.) 12% has been burned and the rest (79%) are hanging around, slowly breaking down into micro- and nano plastics. At the moment known polluted natural areas are our oceans, drinking water, seafood, soil, and air. Plastic emits toxics when it breaks down in the environment which affects the water quality and soil health. all initially leads towards worse living qualities for humans.
Most synthetic clothes aren't recyclable due to being made of mixed materials.
Other reasons are: Quality (plastic does only have a limited lifespan until it can't be recycled, which means it initially ends up as waste that never really goes away (unless burned with the release of GHGs) and will continue to pollute.) Money. Just fragments of the plastic created are recycled today, and more could be - not only of the types that are recycled but other, less common alternatives - but are stopped because it is too expensive. There's also not a good enough market to deal with it.
So knowing that plastic always will end up at waste or burned REDUCTION is the solely best alternative because we can't keep burning it forever. Plastic is made from FOSSIL FUELS which means burning plastic is burning FOSSIL FUELS.
To think you can recycle or burn your way out of a problem like this It's like dealing with the physical effects of a broken bone and not the broken bone itself. And the plastic industry and oil and gas industry wants this. They want us to point fingers at Asia for being grand polluters when much of what we need to do is look at our own consumption of plastic and reduce it to the best of our abilities and privileges. Western society is a massive contributor to plastic waste.