Exploring the Pros and Cons of Bioplastics Essay - 644 Words

Plastics are one of the most versatile of all material and we use them in everyday items such as cars, pens, planes, toothbrushes and the list goes on. But there is a problem, plastics are synthetic and take very long to decompose in landfills so we can’t get rid of them easily. Well, now there is a lot of hype about bio plastics; plastics that are made using corn, potato or other annually renewable sources which are compostable biodegradable (Glen 2009). Bio-plastics are commonly portrayed as environmentally friendly in terms of the time it take to decompose but there are many more cons to bio-plastics than pros. The cons that outweigh the short decomposing time scale are methane emissions, recycling problems and food price inflation.†¦show more content†¦Furthermore, the bio-plastics create problems for recycling facilities, adding to the plastic problem. Some studies show that bioplastics will contaminate petro plastic recycling if the concentration is higher than 0.1% (1000 ppm) and the recycled material will be useless (About bioplastics 2010). Once the production and use of bioplastics increases, it will be very hard to actually control the concentration of bioplastics in recycling units as it looks the same as petro plastic to consumers (Bioplastics and biodegradable plastics 2010). Therefore, if bioplastics are used on a bigger scale than, it will undermine the current recycling efforts. The only solution to this will be to totally replace petro-plastics with bioplastics but, methane emissions are certainly a big risk. Another, risk is the inflation of food prices if bioplastics are used on a larger scale. As discussed earlier, bioplastics are made using corn starch, potatoes and pea startch and the bioplastics industry is growing every year. The more this industry grows the more demand it will create for these foods. It will be almost like we are farming to grow plastics. Some experts speculate that, by 2014, almost a quarter of US gra in production will be turned over to biofuels and bioplastics production, potentially causing a significant rise in food prices (Michael Good 2010). There is already not enough food to go around due to the rising