www.dezeen.com: Bioplastics could potentially be worse for the environment than conventional plastics, according to recycling expert Arthur Huang.
Switching to plastic made from plants instead of fossil fuels would require vast amounts of farmland, Huang said. This could could cause environmental problems and deprive humans of food.
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I think it is an understatement to say that regular plastic is mainly an aesthetic problems. There are issues with how it effects wildlife and simply the fact that it does not go away and there is not enough room for all of it. This news really feels like we will never catch a break. I feel like another issue with this is that bioplastics are meant for composting. There is this misunderstanding that composting is just when things break down and become part of the soil, but composting requires different circumstances and also does make the soil more acidic. This is a problem when we put bioplastics into landfills, but if we had larger composting sites and were better about maintaining and getting access to them I feel like this would still be better than continuing to use regular plastics. Some crops, like potatoes, like more acidic soil so I do not think all hope is lost for bioplastics. Recycling is a great option, but I still think composting is a great thing to do.
This article brought up a lot of very interesting points about plastic use. I think we always, in an effort to do what we think is a good thing, look for anything to ‘help’ the environment. But I don’t think we often consider the domino effect of the actions we take. In this case, a more compostable solution could help ocean or land pollution, but could seriously harm agriculture and farm-land, as well as soil chemistry. This article reminded me a lot of the TD3 Greening Scenery Project. The goal of the project was to determine methods of making scenic fabrication more eco-friendly. We all started with pretty ‘simple’ solutions, but after more analysis found that the things most people throw out when talking about green construction have a similar domino effect. You trade one damage for another. At the end of the day, it’s still good to be chasing temporary solutions while longer ones are being researched. People’s hearts are in the right place, we just have to keep thinking while we are acting. We have to always be willing to re-adjust what is the new ‘best’ solution.
So based on this it seems like the ideal option is stopping the production of new traditional plastic, continuing to recycle traditional plastic, and then having additional new plastic be bioplastic which we then recycle? But maybe the risk of that is too much given the ramifications of bioplastic ending up in the ecosystem. I feel like in an ideal world we stop producing any new plastic at all, I feel like if we could recycle plastic effectively then we’ve already made enough plastic to fulfill all of our plastic needs moving forward. But, in practice, that realistically won’t happen, which leads to the question of if the reduced carbon footprint of producing bioplastics would be worth it given the risk of environmental damage from the decomposition of bioplastics. Overall, I think this article just shows that there are no quick fixes and you can’t get something for nothing. In general we want to keep living the way we’ve been living without destroying the environment, but in practice we can’t just continue with our way of life being functionally the same and just a different kind of plastic.
This article brings up some really good points about Bioplastic that can be transferred to the use of any environmentally friendly material. This article points out that material might be greener but the creation process is more damaging the creation process of the regular material. I feel like I’ve heard all kinds of stories like this where either shipping in the greener material or the building or disposing of the greener material is actually worse off for the planet. This article also makes a really helpful distinction between biodegradable and compostable. This is an interesting but necessary distinction in sourcing green products. Overall this article drove home two really important points about how green products aren’t always truly green and the actually most ecologically friendly thing to do is just use less. I think the most interesting part of this article was when the actual footprint of the bioplastic was debated. I feel like this is a common issue about how products ecological impact doesn’t always have concrete conclusions about it.
Okay, so this is a very interesting topic to me, I have a lot of opinions on agriculture and deforestation and all that jazz, so this was a fun one. First off, I don’t think the solution to the plastic problem should be different plastic, but rather plastic alternatives. Bio-degradable options, things made out of recycled materials/ post-consumer materials, glass, paper, etc. Though bioplastic sounds like a great idea, the impact on the environment would be more immediately felt if we were to convert entirely that the effect that slow decomposing traditional plastic would have.
Secondly, I very strongly disagree with the idea the conventional plastic/ocean plastic is largely an aesthetic problem and that it “causes no physical harm to ecosystems.” Perhaps it does not change PH the way bioplastics do, but ocean life is still being massively affected by the presence of plastics in the ocean. (insert photo of ocean creature caught in/having eaten actual garbage). So, to say conventional plastic does not affect the ecosystem is an entirely false claim.
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