Refresh BIO-DEGRADABLE & COMPOSTABLE plastic bags

From: KatCheung Bags      Read: 2577     Last Updated: 2019/10/24

We refresh BIO-DEGRADABLE & COMPOSTABLE plastic bags

We recently refresh our plastic bags with 100% Eco-friendly BIO-DEGRADABLE and even COMPOSTABLE bags. These bags are inadvertently littered they will degrade into water and carbon dioxide within 6 to 24 months. We can provide full ranges of green bags from oxo-biodegradable to biobased compostable material, including D2W, EPI, PLA, PBAT-PLA, PVA etc. with certificates of OK Compost INDUSTRIAL (EN 13432) and OK Compost HOME (ASTM D6400 & ASTM D6868), they are alternatives in areas with plastic bag bans.

What’s The Difference Between a Degradable, Compostable and Biodegradable plastic bag?

[Traditional plastic bags]
How are traditional plastic bags detrimental to our environment? Let me count the ways. Single-use plastic bags have an average life span of 12 minutes, and worldwide we are using 2 million of these every sixty seconds.

Polyethene bags are made from a non-renewable resource, and are incredibly harmful to the marine environment as they never biodegrade. Instead, they will simply break into smaller and smaller pieces over hundreds of years, inflicting untold amounts of damage to natural ecosystems.

[Biodegradable plastic bags]
To put it simply, something is biodegradable when living things, like fungi or bacteria, can break it down. Biodegradable bags are made from plant-based materials like corn and wheat starch rather than petroleum. However when it comes to this kind of plastic, there are certain conditions required for the bag to begin to biodegrade.

Firstly, temperatures need to reach 50 degrees Celsius. Secondly, the bag needs to be exposed to UV light. In an oceanic environment, you'd be hard pressed to meet either of these criteria. Plus, if biodegradable bags are sent to landfill, they break down without oxygen to produce methane, a greenhouse gas with a warming capacity 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

[Degradable or 'oxo-degradable' plastic bags]
Degradable items don't have living organisms as a crucial part of the breakdown process. Degradable bags cannot be classed as biodegradable or compostable. Instead, chemical additives used in the plastic allow the bag to break down quicker than a standard plastic bag usually would.

Essentially bags touted as 'degradable' are definitely not beneficial, and can even be worse for the environment! Degradable bags that disintegrate just become tinier and tinier pieces of microplastic quicker, and still pose serious threats to marine life. Microplastics enter the food chain lower down, getting eaten by smaller species and then continuing to make their way up the food chain as these smaller species are consumed.

[Compostable plastic bags]
The word 'compostable' is incredibly misleading for the average consumer. You'd think a bag labeled 'compostable' would mean you could throw it in your backyard compost alongside your fruit and vegie scraps, right? Wrong. Compostable bags biodegrade, but only under certain conditions.

Compostable bags need to be composted in a specific composting facility, of which there are very few of in Australia. Compostable bags are generally made from plant material that return to base organic components when processed by these facilities。