Gardeners beware – those “compostable” bin bags might not so readily turn into soil. A study published in Environmental Science & Technology has found that many common biodegradeable plastics, aren’t – and that recycling is a much better bet.
There are typically two ways to make plastics degrade faster than they otherwise would: either add stuff to them to make them break down faster, or make them out of biological materials like vegetable oil or corn starch. The researchers, from Michigan State University, were specifically interested in the first set, and did what has to be done when testing how fast something rots – they buried a bunch of different plastics, for three years, and then dug them up again to see what had happened. The results don’t bode well for the efficacy of additives.
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