While there are many potential uses for biodegradable plastic, it won't be able to cover all use cases. One of the amazing things about plastic is the very fact that it never degrades. Often...
While there are many potential uses for biodegradable plastic, it won't be able to cover all use cases. One of the amazing things about plastic is the very fact that it never degrades. Often that's exactly what you want.
The article specifically mentions biodegradable bottles. Isn't that one of the things we don't want to degrade? We wouldn't want them to start leaking after a few months (or even years).
Sure, bottled water has an indefinite safe shelf-life but IMO it's only in certain rare cases where it would be important the plastic that contains it does as well (e.g. in "end of times" and...
Sure, bottled water has an indefinite safe shelf-life but IMO it's only in certain rare cases where it would be important the plastic that contains it does as well (e.g. in "end of times" and disaster prepping). That is not really realistically needed for 99.9% of bottled water use scenarios where the time between bottling and use is probably only several months or a year at most. So as long as the biodegradable plastic used for those bottles lasts longer than in those 99.9% of cases, then the benefits of switching to it outweigh any negatives and definitely outweigh the incredible negatives that are associated with using non-biodegradable plastics for them.
Also worth keeping in mind is that "biodegradable" doesn't necessarily mean that it will break down while sitting on a shelf at a supermarket. E.g. OXO Biodegradable plastic (which is currently used primarily as a replacement for traditional plastic bags) can last 5+ years if kept inside and even when exposed to the natural environment can take 2 years to break down entirely. And as we get better at developing biodegradable plastics, I imagine that 5+ year stability could probably be increased to suit whatever the desired life of the product would be, too.
With non-biodegradable plastics being so clearly detrimental to our environment, unless something actually does need to last "forever" instead of just "X years/decades", which is IMO exceedingly rare, we might as well switch to biodegradable plastics for them.
Well given that we haven't even developed a biodegradable plastic considered suitable for use in bottling water yet, and so we have no idea how it would perform under any circumstances (but "bits"...
Well given that we haven't even developed a biodegradable plastic considered suitable for use in bottling water yet, and so we have no idea how it would perform under any circumstances (but "bits" floating in the water is an unlikely scenario even when we do), I don't really know how to answer that question.
While there are many potential uses for biodegradable plastic, it won't be able to cover all use cases. One of the amazing things about plastic is the very fact that it never degrades. Often that's exactly what you want.
The article specifically mentions biodegradable bottles. Isn't that one of the things we don't want to degrade? We wouldn't want them to start leaking after a few months (or even years).
Sure, bottled water has an indefinite safe shelf-life but IMO it's only in certain rare cases where it would be important the plastic that contains it does as well (e.g. in "end of times" and disaster prepping). That is not really realistically needed for 99.9% of bottled water use scenarios where the time between bottling and use is probably only several months or a year at most. So as long as the biodegradable plastic used for those bottles lasts longer than in those 99.9% of cases, then the benefits of switching to it outweigh any negatives and definitely outweigh the incredible negatives that are associated with using non-biodegradable plastics for them.
Also worth keeping in mind is that "biodegradable" doesn't necessarily mean that it will break down while sitting on a shelf at a supermarket. E.g. OXO Biodegradable plastic (which is currently used primarily as a replacement for traditional plastic bags) can last 5+ years if kept inside and even when exposed to the natural environment can take 2 years to break down entirely. And as we get better at developing biodegradable plastics, I imagine that 5+ year stability could probably be increased to suit whatever the desired life of the product would be, too.
With non-biodegradable plastics being so clearly detrimental to our environment, unless something actually does need to last "forever" instead of just "X years/decades", which is IMO exceedingly rare, we might as well switch to biodegradable plastics for them.
... is non-degraded, regular plastic better?
Well given that we haven't even developed a biodegradable plastic considered suitable for use in bottling water yet, and so we have no idea how it would perform under any circumstances (but "bits" floating in the water is an unlikely scenario even when we do), I don't really know how to answer that question.