Advantages:
· Reduced CO2 emissions
It takes only 0.8 metric tons of CO2 to create bio-plastics which is 3.2 metric tons less than normal plastics.
· Cheaper alternative
Bioplastics are cheaper than normal plastics especially with the soaring oil prices.
· Waste
Bioplastics don’t generate as much toxic run-off
· Reduced carbon footprint
Oil based plastics need fossil fuels and bio-plastics don’t
· Multiple end-of-life points
Valuable raw material can be reclaimed and recycled into other products.
Disadvantages:
· Food crisis/ Land required for renewable resources
People are starving because they don’t have enough money for food. So why then make plastic out of food. There is already one million tonnes of bio-plastic being produced annually and because, to make bio-plastics, you need renewable food stock it has to rely on people with enough land to grow that food stock. If bioplastics becomes the multi billion dollar industry it is expected to that’s going to take a lot of land to make the food stock that it needs to keep up production.
· Compostibility
In Taiwan they have industrial composters which are required to compost bioplastics but in Australia we do not have such a device which means all those bio-plastic containers that the food comes in at the super market just ends up in landfill anyway.
· The marketing is good but not the honesty
As discussed, in Australia we do not have industrial composters to compost bioplastics. So when you go into a supermarket and it says on the packaging compostable bioplastics it doesn’t mean you can throw it into a compost bin at home and it will turn into dirt in a couple of weeks. No instead, it needs the high intensity, high heat of and industrial composter
· Recycling of plastic could become impossible
If you decide to throw your bio-plastics in the recycling bin, which you shouldn’t if you live in Australia, and it somehow ends up in the recycling stream it will mess up the recycling process and the materials that were meant to be recycled become unstable brittle and useless.
· Area not set up for bioplastics
Most developed countries in the world have recycling depots but hardly any at all have industrial composters. I was shopping at a supermarket the other day and I saw a bio-plastic packaged container. When I was at the till I asked the man if I could put this in the recycling bin or the compost bin at home. He said that it needed an industrial composter to be decomposed and Australia wasn’t set up for the recycling of bio0plastics. So why then do they have bio-plastic packaging?
· Reduced CO2 emissions
It takes only 0.8 metric tons of CO2 to create bio-plastics which is 3.2 metric tons less than normal plastics.
· Cheaper alternative
Bioplastics are cheaper than normal plastics especially with the soaring oil prices.
· Waste
Bioplastics don’t generate as much toxic run-off
· Reduced carbon footprint
Oil based plastics need fossil fuels and bio-plastics don’t
· Multiple end-of-life points
Valuable raw material can be reclaimed and recycled into other products.
Disadvantages:
· Food crisis/ Land required for renewable resources
People are starving because they don’t have enough money for food. So why then make plastic out of food. There is already one million tonnes of bio-plastic being produced annually and because, to make bio-plastics, you need renewable food stock it has to rely on people with enough land to grow that food stock. If bioplastics becomes the multi billion dollar industry it is expected to that’s going to take a lot of land to make the food stock that it needs to keep up production.
· Compostibility
In Taiwan they have industrial composters which are required to compost bioplastics but in Australia we do not have such a device which means all those bio-plastic containers that the food comes in at the super market just ends up in landfill anyway.
· The marketing is good but not the honesty
As discussed, in Australia we do not have industrial composters to compost bioplastics. So when you go into a supermarket and it says on the packaging compostable bioplastics it doesn’t mean you can throw it into a compost bin at home and it will turn into dirt in a couple of weeks. No instead, it needs the high intensity, high heat of and industrial composter
· Recycling of plastic could become impossible
If you decide to throw your bio-plastics in the recycling bin, which you shouldn’t if you live in Australia, and it somehow ends up in the recycling stream it will mess up the recycling process and the materials that were meant to be recycled become unstable brittle and useless.
· Area not set up for bioplastics
Most developed countries in the world have recycling depots but hardly any at all have industrial composters. I was shopping at a supermarket the other day and I saw a bio-plastic packaged container. When I was at the till I asked the man if I could put this in the recycling bin or the compost bin at home. He said that it needed an industrial composter to be decomposed and Australia wasn’t set up for the recycling of bio0plastics. So why then do they have bio-plastic packaging?