Bioplastics are not biodegradable
You may have noticed them in your health food store; thin plastic shopping bags for fruit or vegetables. Here in Belgium I have been using these whenever I had forgotten my reusable shopping bag. After using the same bag a few times, I always happily disposed it with the compost waste, until I learned these so called biodegradable or compostable bags are not really degradable…
The Dutch version of the article can be read in Eos-magazine no.9-Oct. 2009 or downloaded as pdf here. The English version follows below:
The bioplastics industry is telling us that bioplastics are biodegradable or compostable. But this is not really true. In Flanders (northern part of Belgium) and probably many more countries, bioplastics are incinerated just as the bulk of our waste.
