I would love a ban to prohibit the use of oil based plastic to produce any item that is deemed “disposable”. I’m sad that even items that are “earth friendly” and “biodegradable” are wrapped in ugly oil based plastic.

Did you know we use 300,000 barrels of oil EVERY DAY to wrap the products we use in the US in plastic? Plastic around paper towels, toilet paper, and all those other things we just take off and throw into the garbage. I dare you to stand at the end of an aisle in the grocery store and look down and count the number of items you see that are wrapped in the non-renewable, oil based stuff. Think about how many of our soldiers have died protecting that precious oil so we can wrap our toilet paper in it. Oil based products have a cost that should not simply be measured in dollars.

The best way to promote responsible production and packaging is to insist that the products you buy and use are truly earth friendly – from the inside to the outside. If 300 million people insist that what they use is responsible, manufacturers will supply that demand.

In order to make change, there needs to be some form of regulation to expect biodegradable ‘plastic’ replacements.

How can we do this together and get people aware that the materials are available but we need to regulate this.

In order to sustain North America’s post-consumer plastic bottle recycling industry, APR encourages the production of streams of baled bottles that do not contain contaminants. APR has model bale specifications for two commercially recycled plastic bottles, PET and HDPE, listed on its website which provides guidance on bale purity. Currently, PET and HDPE bottles represent about 95% of all plastic bottles used in the United States. Bottles made of resins other than PET and HDPE are often contaminants in bales of PET and HDPE bottles.

Until critical mass levels are achieved that allow for efficient system-wide reclamation, biopolymers may be an undesirable inclusion from a technical standpoint in both PET and HDPE bottle bales as are many bottles coded 3 through 7. Until the volume of biopolymers bottles in the commercial stream reaches critical levels that allow for economical, independent recycling operations, individual reclaiming operations are likely to be highly selective in their interest in receiving biopolymer bottles. Some reclaimers may find that processing some biopolymer bottles to sell recycled biopolymer plastic meets their business plans.

Automatic bottle sorting equipment based on near infrared spectra can distinguish some biopolymer bottles from PET and HDPE bottles and separate the biopolymer bottles. The economics of such sorting is enhanced by high throughput and a substantial presence of the minor material, the biopolymer. Manually sorting biopolymer bottles that appear visually similar to PET or HDPE bottles containers would be problematic with regard to efficiency and accuracy.

To date most commercial biopolymers have a density greater than 1.0 gram per cubic centimeter. Standard plastics recycling operations should separate biopolymers from HDPE, but not from PET, based on specific gravity. Biopolymers like other traditional polymers with a density greater than 1.0 g/cm3, should not be a technical issue to HDPE reclaimers, but would create a yield loss with some economic impact. Hazing of clear PET resin is expected if the concentration of at least some biopolymers exceeds approximately 0.1%. Biopolymers could be a technical problem and economic impact for PET reclaimers.

APR encourages all plastic bottle designers and decision makers to examine the APR “Design for Recyclability Guidelines” at its website, http://www.plasticsrecycling.org. APR continues to work with biopolymer manufacturers to identify and understand the impacts of biopolymers on the recycling of other bottle materials.

APR encourages discussions on one biopolymer, PLA or polylactic acid, be conducted with NatureWorks LLC, a PLA provider and an APR member, to identify and understand the impacts of PLA on the recycling of other bottle materials. NatureWorks can be contacted at its website, http://www.natureworksllc.com.