Biodegradable Bags— A Truly Feasible Green Solution?
As good as the idea of turning plastic into compost, how much do I have to offer from my wallet?
I remember one afternoon while heading back from school, our front porch was decorated with an object of the new arrival— a little green container that is named the “curbside organics bin,” which we later renamed as the green cart. Our family had not yet realized the consequence that this indoor garbage can bring us, for we forgot to check our shared driveway not until the next day. It is when we realized the narrow pathway for backing out was made exceedingly more difficult by having six bins aligned in the middle (three our neightbours) with one-third of the bin collection a new addition.
Anyway, I digressed. The bin was treated with intense mindfulness the first couple weeks of receiving it into our threshold; feeding it with scrappy leftovers, long strands of apple peels, chunky broccoli stalks, all the remains of good nutritious value we did not withdraw from dumping them in. But our hospitality and enthusiasm quickly wore off after realizing that foods can only be deposited in a specific type of fancy, matching-coloured plastic bags called biodegradable bags. The recycling company only provided three bags, scarcely enough for a week’s usage considering a family in constant flitting of appetite, producing residues that could feed a chick into a turkey (I exaggerated but still apologetic).
Our family was not against the practice. It doesn't hurt our brain cells to sacrifice a teaspoon of energy sorting organic wastes to our own home. We headed out for a scavenger hunt for identical plastic bags that the company provided, hopefully, to continue our small exertion in improving the environment and redeem ourselves slightly from the culpability of wasting quite a portion of food. The thought lingered all the way till the price tag busted our willingness for eco-altruism. It was unbelievable how garbage bags can be so exorbitant. Most stores sell biodegradable bags for $24-$34 per twenty bags. I’m sure there are cheaper ones to purchase but it was not available in our local market. Based on personal opinion. I think it’s unsuitable to ship plastic bags online because if I wanted to throw out trash, the gratuity is paying additional shipping fee on top of possibly suffering a gap in supply due to the waiting time. No wonder the company provided a free trial of merely three bags. I’m sorry that even if I knew the ordinary black or transparent bags were suffocating the Earth and sucked in landfill, surviving to the millionth of generations of offspring that came after us, they were, indeed, hyper-budget-friendly.
It really depends on the household, but I’m speaking for those living on minimum wage, facing job crises, and enduring lower standards of life that may even reach the stage of poverty. It’s not a primary argument that they were too sluggish, selfish, or ignorant to take environmental initiatives or choose eco-friendly options, but they were hindered by livelihood compensations if all these small extra costs add up. Rubbish bags sound superfluous, but it's not a small consumption; it’s recommended by health experts to change kitchen and bathroom garbage bags a minimum of once every two days for an average house, and there are immaculate hygiene perfectionists who change at least once every day. Assuming a simple mathematical calculation comparing $24 for twenty biodegradable bags (the low-quality ones) and $12 for fifty standard plastic bags (more expensive ones). The difference between the unit price (price for one bag) is $0.96 which appears almost negligible if not considering the speed of consumption. Let’s say at least four biodegradable bags were required in a week (these bags were half the size in carrying capacity and very flimsy), multiplied by four weeks and twelve months for a year. For a dedicated annual consumer, biodegradable bags are $184–$200 more costly than ordinary plastic bags. City-wide, a monthly utility payment is also implemented, reaching up to $7.29 per month according to the government website. Every household with a black and blue cart (which exists by default) is subjected to receiving the green bin, so that means the green cart program was demanding mandatory donations regardless of our efforts in participation. Even if spiderwebs masked the bin handle because it was empty and never pushed out, everyone has to pay the extra $87.5 over a year for the works of “collection, composting, cart maintenance, education programs, and program management” of other people’s carts. Thus, altogether, the net total would peak at around $300 annually if people were faithfully engaged in the enterprise.
It feels a little askew and absurd for people who rush to the store fighting for discount products and giving up the chance to buy things that they like, and in turn, it’s all for the sake of upgrading the type of plastic bags they use. Yes, the conservative attitude and contribution are well-appreciated but think from the perspective of an average household: How many are genuinely unhesitant to pay up to an extra $200 for rubbish bags that deemed themselves so frivolous among essential payments of rent, fuel, mandatory utility fee, food, whatever it is during a time of economic depression and the lack of employment opportunities?
Ever since plastic has been notoriously criticized in public as one of the top murderers in the environment (they are), there will, inevitably, be manufacturers seizing the prospect of gaining maximum profit out of a recently-revolution industry focusing on green technologies. Just for the matter of plastic bags, there's an ongoing misunderstanding of the term biodegradability. The word, automatically, has grown to be associated with the virtue of being sustainable, which is not always the case.
Biodegradation is a term referring to the process of converting anything biotic into water and carbon dioxide, releasing these end-product molecules back into the air by the action of microorganisms. All types of plastics will biodegrade at one point but that may as well be plainly summarized as an infinity. For instance, plastic water bottles made from compounds like polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polycarbonate (PC), and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics are extracted from crude oil and other petroleum sources, also known as petroleum-based plastics and these are the “ordinary plastics” we referred to. They also vowed to biodegrade in the future but it took one water bottle 450 years to start decomposing and fragmenting (become microplastics that basically still exist as plastic but are too small to see), which is not something conservationists want in buying plastic bags labeled biodegradable in the first place. So many marketing plastics bear only the title of biodegradability, providing insufficient context and not setting them apart from the ranks of damaging the environment.
To add more confusion, bags claimed to be bioplastics are essentially plant-based plastic. Instead of forming PET, PC, HDPE, etc, to derive the properties and characteristics of plastic, people modified sugarcane and corn starch to achieve similar durability and malleability of its texture. All the compostable plastic bags will be plant-based or bioplastics, but vice versa, not all bioplastics will be compostable. Some take just as long as petroleum-based plastics to become microscopic fragments. Among all, it’s right to conclude the best plastic options for the environment will be compostable ones. Under an industrial composting facility environment, these plastics will disintegrate within 12 weeks and degrade ninety percent of their mass within 180 days of being transported to the proper location. The remaining ten percent of solid materials will become valuable composts capable of soil absorption. However, even compostable plastics will not promise a constant, complete degradation; it depends on the quality of the plastic, the heat, pressure, and humidity of the composting site. There’s still a considerable portion of microplastic resulting from partially dissolved plastic mixed within the compost, so it’s not so much about providing the most optimum condition for biodegradation, but accepting the fact that microorganisms usually cannot perform an absolutely thorough job outside of a laboratory setting.
I cannot help but wonder if the green cart program would be more successful if the government purely advocated the abandonment of plastic bags to throw trash, it just requires more effort of dumping all the peels in the bin and rearranging the schedule of recycling cars to come more frequently during a week. Who doesn’t love the delightful aroma of a bin drifting with the sweet fragrance of rotting food scraps? I’m serious if people don’t mind providing their green bins with a fresh bath service every week. Therefore, realistically, on behave of my city and those facing the same inflation issue, the government should first lower the cost of those biodegradable bags available in our market by funding the leading manufacturing companies before they distribute all the bins to the nook of the most elusive alleyway. Now if fair-priced bags are found on our grocery shelves, I sure using biodegradable bags will be a policy that everyone can get behind to sustain and cherish our planet.
References:
https://www.amazon.ca/biodegradable-bags/s?k=biodegradable+bags
https://www.amazon.ca/Trash-Bags/b?ie=UTF8&node=6370614011
https://www.saskatoon.ca/services-residents/waste-recycling/organics-food-yard-waste/curbside-organics-gree
n-cart#:~:text=As%20of%20the%20end%20of,curbside%20organics%20program%20are%20expected.
https://www.greendotbioplastics.com/biodegradable-vs-compostable-vs-oxo-degradable-plastics-a-straightforw
ard-explanation/
https://ensia.com/features/bioplastics-bio-based-biodegradable-environment/
https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/how-long-does-it-take-for-plastics-to-biod
egrade.htm#:~:text=Plastic%20bags%20traveling%20in%20the,lines%20take%20around%20600%20years.
https://bottledwater.org/packaging/#:~:text=Plastic%20bottled%20water%20containers%20are,and%20HDPE
%20for%209.2%20percent.
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