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In this vein, are there any company's currently selling viable compostable/biodegradable plastics? I know there is a big drive for straws, but packaging of frui

In this vein, are there any company's currently selling viable compostable/biodegradable plastics? I know there is a big drive for straws, but packaging of fruit, vegetables (and food) is an important target as well.

lnsru 7y ago
Many of them, but it is like 10x more expensive than regular one used today. Biodegradable plastic is an old thing, just too expensive for us. It’s cheaper to dump European garbage in Asia with explanation “they bought it from us”. I am just shaking my head when reading article about German apple bags from the Asian beaches. We are even forced here to sort our waste. Funny thing is that bio waste goes to these expensive biodegradable bags. And then German apple bags and all other clean(!) plastic waste go to separate bag that apparently is recycled.
- majewsky 7y ago
  > separate bag that apparently is recycled This is a common misconception. The yellow bin (Gelbe Tonne) is not about recycling at all. The point is that, in Germany, producers of packaging need to pay a fee per packaging that goes towards disposing of the used packaging, through the Green Dot (Grüner Punkt) system. The yellow bin is therefore paid by them, as opposed to by consumers. This is why the yellow bin is not being described as accepting specific materials, it's explicitly described as accepting packaging (both plastic and paper/carton). When you put a non-packaging plastic item into the yellow bin, it counts as an "intelligent misthrow" (intelligenter Fehlwurf), which is one of my favorite pieces of jargon.
rqs 7y ago
> In this vein, are there any company's currently selling viable compostable/biodegradable plastics? That will increase the cost by an unignorable margin and even that, some biodegradable plastics still take a long time (a year or even years) to be gradated. This is the reason of why things like reusable plates etc is currently the best way to go. That is, when those reusable items actually gets returned.

lnsru 7y ago

Many of them, but it is like 10x more expensive than regular one used today. Biodegradable plastic is an old thing, just too expensive for us. It’s cheaper to dump European garbage in Asia with explanation “they bought it from us”. I am just shaking my head when reading article about German apple bags from the Asian beaches. We are even forced here to sort our waste. Funny thing is that bio waste goes to these expensive biodegradable bags. And then German apple bags and all other clean(!) plastic waste go to separate bag that apparently is recycled.

majewsky 7y ago
> separate bag that apparently is recycled This is a common misconception. The yellow bin (Gelbe Tonne) is not about recycling at all. The point is that, in Germany, producers of packaging need to pay a fee per packaging that goes towards disposing of the used packaging, through the Green Dot (Grüner Punkt) system. The yellow bin is therefore paid by them, as opposed to by consumers. This is why the yellow bin is not being described as accepting specific materials, it's explicitly described as accepting packaging (both plastic and paper/carton). When you put a non-packaging plastic item into the yellow bin, it counts as an "intelligent misthrow" (intelligenter Fehlwurf), which is one of my favorite pieces of jargon.

rqs 7y ago

> In this vein, are there any company's currently selling viable compostable/biodegradable plastics? That will increase the cost by an unignorable margin and even that, some biodegradable plastics still take a long time (a year or even years) to be gradated. This is the reason of why things like reusable plates etc is currently the best way to go. That is, when those reusable items actually gets returned.