Our Green Streets Blog

Two quotes stand out in the drafting of this report on making biodegradable plastic:

Micromidas cells make plastic Source: Micromidas

The first comes complements of Mario Vellandi, who presides over Melodies in Marketing. He sent a great story this way, with this slug: “A non-petroleum plastic made from organic waste that completely degrades in six months to a year? What’s not to love? Seriously, you rock Ryan.”

Okay, this sounds like a marvelous idea, especially considering how much petroleum-based plastic we use once, only to turn around and toss it out into landfills.

That led to watching Ryan Smith present as a social innovation fellow at PopTech 2010, pitching the company he helped co-found, Micromidas, where he serves as chief technical officer. The 6:04 video is very much worth watching.

At Micromidas, a team of entrepreneurial engineers and chemists has found microbes, when placed in a reactor that can produce high-quality plastic from organic waste, sans any petroleum additives to the formula. Best news of all, the product degrades in less than a year.

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Styrofoam can be recycled

In spite of what many recycling proponents think, Styrofoam now has a place in the recycling supply chain, reports Fort Collins artist, Nancy Dobbs, who has been storing Styrofoam junk in hopes her wait would lead to getting the material recycled.  That was when she heard about one innovative company, ACH Foam Technologies, which ran a recycling operation from its corporate offices in Denver.

While Styrofoam may be regarded as a miracle substance for the packaging industry, it has long been considered a curse with no cure by recyclers and environmentalists due to an interminably long lifespan and its difficult fit in the recycling industry, where most regard it as nonrecyclable.

Thus Dobbs was happy to make the long drive south from Fort Collins with a carload of Styrofoam she had collected over the years. ACH indicated it was willing to receive the load, as long as it hadn’t been contaminated with food.

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Nick Mallos, a scientist from the Ocean Conservancy, joined on the expedition to the North Pacific Gyre.

Embarking on an important journey this past August, the Ocean Conservancy set sail with San Francisco-based Project Kaisei to expand its research and help with some cleanup on the massive trash vortex that exists in the North Pacific Gyre. Four boats joined in the journey, including a barge large enough to haul away some of the trash that was found in this “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

The North Pacific Gyre, an area between California and the Hawaiian Islands, happens to be where trash from around the world is trapped – much of it plastic – due to four converging ocean currents. Some estimates report the gyre is twice the size of Texas, others argue its size goes double that of the United States.

The actual size of the garbage patch is a great question, says Nick Mallos, Nick Mallos, a marine scientist and member of Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris program who joined the expedition. He describes the trash vortex as being more like an archipelago in character, with parts being clear ocean, while other parts are dense and deep with trash.

Mallos collects data on microplastics, parts that have broken from bottles and packages into very small pieces that almost resemble confetti.  “There was this shimmering gleam of color because the water column just below the surface was littered with these objects. I was just astonished,” says Mallos. “In certain areas, the top three to six feet of water is absolutely dense with these microplastics. If you wave your hand in the water, you come up with these fragments on your hands.”

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i-plas makes lovely products from recycled plastics. Source: i-plas

Massachusetts’s grocers are decreasing the number of disposable bags being used in an effort to develop sounder approaches for waste management. At the same time, the use of recycled plastics products in the construction field is growing.

Waste & Recycling News reports that early results show the number of disposable plastic and paper bags has dropped significantly in Massachusetts following the implementation of a public-private partnership aimed at discouraging plastic bag use at grocery stores.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Massachusetts Food Association began the program in 2009. The joint initiative to reduce the distribution of disposable bags shows 12 supermarket chains, covering 384 stores report the 25% disposable bag distribution reduction. The state and grocers have a goal of reaching at least 33% by 2013.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the innovative recycling technology at i-plas is being used to develop many attractive commercial and residential building products that may otherwise have gone to landfills. The UK company reports or plastic waste that other recyclers cannot handle are being used to produce a range of recycled plastic products which outperform the traditional alternatives of wood, steel and concrete; products which are technically advanced, commercially successful and environmentally responsible.

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“ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

Ocean trash has abundant plastic.

“Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool…….. Read more of this >>

Today we received word from Chris Edwards, sales coordinator at Colorado-based New Wave Enviro Products. I believed my email box contained just one more of the many green promotional pitches I wade through, until I read further, especially the last line.

Here are clips from Mr. Edwards’ letter (emphasis place by me):

“…we manufacture and distribute water products, mainly through Natural Foods Retailers across the Nation. We have been in business for over 15 years and our products offer consumers a way to live litter free and chemical free lives by filtering the water they drink,  they shower and bathe in, and a way to ease the problem with our nation’s landfills.
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Danny Clark, CEO of ENSO Bottles, writes to invite participation in a plastics survey. I encourage your participation.

Glenn,

I hope all has been well.  We are performing some research on how and what consumers think about biodegradable plastics.  The more response from the general public we receive the better the data.

Below is the link to the survey.  If you are interested in posting a link to the survey I can create a collector created just for Green Streets which would redirect the survey takers to a URL of your choosing at the conclusion of the survey as well as customize the Thank You page.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=fktlqEFDW1aNgZgWodfrRA_3d_3d
I would also provide you the survey results data.

Thank you,
Danny Clark
ENSO Bottles, LLC

If you have wondered whether or not garbage patches, gyres, and trash vortexes exist in the oceans, read Ole Nielsen’s blog, OleLog.

North Pacific gyre source: OleLog

Nielsen reports: “Can you imagine what happens when marine garbage ends up in such a vortex? It will never leave it again, all plastic will circulate, new plastic come by and circulate. Ships continue dumping their garbage at sea, and you end up with the world’s biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean.

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For us sneering at the notion of plastics and biodegradability, it is time to stand back and jump up!

Biodegradable plastic bottles will soon be on grocery shelves. Source: Enso Bottles, LLC

What’ll it be: 10,000 years, or two years? That is the question when it comes to the life expectancy of the plastic bottle you drink from.

For those of us looking for the next level of plastic – something that’s not going to be around for eternity – even compostable – we may need to look no further than Arizona.
That’s where ENSO Bottles, LLC is making plastic drinking bottles that are – yes – biodegradable. Not only biodegradable, but when they go to the landfill, digestible to microbes making methane, which can be captured and converted to energy.

This is exactly the kind of cycle in waste-to-energy that ENSO Bottle co-founder and president, Danny Clark, wants. “When our bottles go into the landfill, the idea is that the bottled will break down and create methane.”

Thus Clark can proudly list one of his company’s operating mantras that it develops products that can create value when they are discarded. Clark says there is no exact time for how long it takes his bottles to break down, but estimated the time to be about two years.

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Although some are ready to proclaim the end of the non-biodegradable plastic bottle, some scientists take issue with the reality of such claims. Among those questioning PET biodegradability is Ramani Narayan, Michigan State University Distinguished Professor from the Department of Chemical Engineering & Material Science. Read more of this >>