Plastic products were seen as a sensible solution to products formerly constructed of wood or metal. Not only were plastic products easier to produce, but they also were intended to last forever. Good idea, eh? Well, being that less than 2% of plastic bags, which can take over a 100 years to degrade, are ever recycled, and also being that we further marry ourselves to the suppliers of foreign oil to produce plastic bags, an alternative was sorely needed.
Enter the BioBag---a 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable bag! Each bag is composed of a
material called Mater-Bi, which was invented by Novamont, an award-winning Italian research company dedicated to finding environmental alternatives to polyethylene-based plastics. Mater-Bi is comprised of renewable raw materials of agricultural origin and from non-genetically modified starch. These bags biodegrade in only 10-45 days when exposed to the Earth's elements or to the organisms in the dirt. Their products are varied and include: Kitchen Compost Bags (3 gallon), Tall Kitchen Bags (13 gallon), Lawn & Leaf Bags (33 gallon), Shopping Bags, Dog Waste Bag, Can Pan Liners, Garden Film, and the Nature Waste Bag & accompanying toilet system. These BioBag products are starting to really catch on! For example, San Francisco recently distributed 100,000 rolls of BioBags to residents to promote their residential food waste collection program---ah, I think I left my heart in San Francisco!
My wife and I bought the Tall Kitchen bags and are quite pleased to know that we're putting one less polyethylene-based bag into a landfill. While the bags were a bit pricey for the amount of bags per package (only 12 per package) and the bags are a bit thin, I think the environmental tradeoffs are well worth it! You can find BioBags on most supermarket shelves, so check 'em out!
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