As I’ve been living in Dublin, Ireland this summer and ignoring my duties to blog, I’d like to still report how many Sigg (aluminum) bottles I’ve spotted across Europe. Downtown Dublin’s hip scene rocks the bottles, the tourists rock the bottles. I see a trend of universal environmentalism and health consciousness here; or of just saving money.
The process of biodegradation
However. I’ve been working at University College Dublin, where Dr. Kevin O’Connor is leading a microbiology group’s study about bugs that can actually change toxic materials into biodegradable waste. The article, posted on the UCD website and lined with pictures of plastic water bottles, was too good for me to pass up. Here are some bits from the article:(http://www.ucd.ie/expertiseatucd/researchshowcase/2009/05MAY/plastic/index.html)
His current research in the field of biocatalysis has received a lot of attention recently but he’s been working on it since 2000. Making biodegradable plastic using different organisms was already a well-known procedure, one that the microbiologist and his team planned to expand on.
“What we were trying to do was come up with a different approach. We were asking if pollutants could be converted into valuable products like biodegradable plastic?”
Imagine if biodegradation caught on with water beverage companies. Imagine if all plastics could be biodegradable, clearing us of our landfill issues in the United States.
The original compound that Dr O’Connor used in the process was styrene, the main ingredient of polystyrene. But the team realised that the conversion of polystyrene itself to biodegradable plastics would be of greater value.
However, their particular bacterium didn’t grow on polystyrene. So he contacted Professor Walter Kaminsky in the University of Hamburg, an expert in pyrolysis – a special technique that uses temperatures of up to 520 degrees to heat the plastic in a vacuum, producing a liquid form of the styrene.
This process, I’m sure, cannot be cheap.
Dr O’Connor had a fair idea that their bug would grow when fed this styrene oil, and indeed it did, producing the biodegradable plastic PHA (polyhydroxalkanoate).
Extracting this plastic from the bacteria is a very simple procedure that involves soaking the bugs in a mild detergent. “Basically the detergent rips the bugs open in order to extract the small granules of plastic from each cell,” explains Dr O’Connor. The plastic is cleaned and it is then ready to be used.
This extraction process might be simple to carry out, but imagine the cost of the equipment needed to soak grand colonies of these bugs in detergent. I’m skeptical about whether a large-scale version of this process would be financially, or even technologically, feasible.
At the industrial level, the two-step process is carried out on a large scale, producing up to 1,000 litres of plastic – that’s a lot of bugs. Dr O’Connor is now working on improving the efficiency of the technique, using a combination of feeding and molecular strategies. At present some 30-35% of each bacterium is plastic; his team are looking to increase this yield to as much as 80%.
One one hand, this 80% may seem incredible, but the ranges of goods that could be made from this form of plastic may not span everything we imagine. Polystyrene water bottles and tupperware might be feasible for the largest companies to make, but probably not for all other products. Maybe we shouldn’t suddenly get excited that we could recycle anything plastic.
Keep in mind, we haven't really been recycling:
On the other hand, remember that the Sierra Club has reported that Americans discard over 30 million plastic bottles every day. Over 40% of the beverages purchased each day are plastic water bottles. Switching these plastics over to be more recyclable materials would significantly decrease our waste that won’t be broken down efficiently.
And think: no, people are not recycling enough at all, and materials aren’t really recyclable. In 2005 the EPA reported that only 5.8% of the then-26 million tons of plastics manufactured in the U.S. are recycled. We need biodegradable plastics if we will continue to use plastic products.
“Polystyrene is a very recyclable plastic,” stresses Dr O’Connor. The problem is, once it’s recycled, people aren’t quite sure what to do with it. Recycled polystyrene produces a plastic of a lower grade and so it cannot be used in the food industry. It can be made into ‘timber look’ plastic for making picnic tables and chairs, for example, but O’Connor says the market for this is limited.
Create a market through rattling the media. Imagine that by creating a greater hype in the public about the multiple environmental and health dangers of plastic material use, there will be a company incentive in the market to please customers and create polystyrene products. Call your local newspapers. Write a blog post. Po-ly-sty-rene.
Currently, polystyrene for recycling is exported to China. But Dr O’Connor believes this is an inefficient practice, and proposes instead a municipal recycling scheme, where people deposit their waste plastic.
I think I’ll be emailing Dr. O’Connor about the United States’ Bottle Bills, being passed and amended rapidly throughout the United States. Under these state systems, you pay an extra couple cents when you purchase a plastic product. You get the return when you collect your bottles and deposit them. Get your money back. To reciprocate, the U.S. can take Ireland’s example of its grocery stores charging customers for plastic bags. I’ve been stuffing loaves of bread and hummus in my purse after my evening EuroSpar trips.
And this revolutionary method of recycling is not limited to polystyrene, or Dr O’Connor’s particular bug, for that matter. “We have used our technology for polystyrene but you can apply the same strategy to recycling any plastic. Also there are hundreds of different bacteria that will make different types of plastic so opportunities are huge,” he says.
Market for competition and innovation! Bank on this, struggling scientists of America and Ireland! Grab a science lab and go.
But what does it really mean to be a biodegradable plastic?
This means the plastic can break down chemically without any catalyst or outside chemical. A biodegradable plastic bag would decompose on the side of the road instead of tangling up small birds and crowding our landscapes (this was the case in Ireland before the switch to no-bag stores). Biodegragation uses microorganisms, or “bugs,” to break down these films on the plastics. The materials are enlarged in structure and “metabolized until remaining materials” are no longer harmful to the environment. Easy.
Yet a downside to this process is that the carbon inside biodegradable plastics will be released upon this metabolism process, producing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the air, potentially in high amounts. If made from other materials, like animal products, methane could be released instead. Methane is, of course, another great greenhouse gas. (http://www.astm.org/Standards/D6400.htm).
Yet we could still weigh this: would we rather have greater greenhouse gas emissions or greater landfill buildup? Unfortunately, plastics producers are making this critical choice. We as consumers need to instead decide upon this and be lobbying for legislation or pressuring companies. Write to Glad. Write to Aquafina.
What is recyclable for now? Not everything:
I’ve gotten many inquiries about which plastic materials are actually recyclable, so I’ll post a convenient guide I found online about what those little numbers on your plastic bottles mean. (http://www.ehow.com/how_2282329_determine-what-plastics-recyclable.html).
"...lead them to products that are always safe: buy an aluminum or stainless steel water bottle."
ReplyDeleteWatch those blanket statements. You're careful to disclaim that plastic bottles aren't always good because of the potential that it contains BPA, but metal carries the same risk; it's constantly being criticized for things like lead in the decorative paint and BPA in the lining keeping the metal itself from becoming a toxin. It has its fair share of downsides too.
"Remember that you're an educated consumer and/or recycler, but those around you are not."
I'm sorry you think so poorly of society.
Thanks for your input. Throughout the span of my blog, I've gone through and discussed/rated the safety features of particular metal bottle companies. I've recommended, throughout, the Klean Kanteen or Sigg products. You can purchase these products at www.H2Ox2.com. Please refer to my past posts about the safety features of the products I've recommended.
ReplyDeleteNo, using metal bottle products does not have the same downsides as using plastics would, when we're looking from an environmentalist perspective. This is the topic of this post, rather than health concerns. It is far more eco-friendly and energy efficient to reuse one metal bottle and recycle it once than to constantly recycle plastic materials.
In the fields of Sociology and Communications, the public of society is recognized as a passive group that will only take action when mobilized. When I write that society is uneducated on its own, I refer to the theories that social scientists have used and proven for centuries. My understanding of consumer psychology is not the same as "thinking poorly" of it, but rather an analysis of aggregate behavior.
Unfortunately, this author, like many, fail to view the entire environmental issue with stainless and alumninum bottles:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/19/opinion/20090419bottle.html
Producing a stainless bottle requires 7 times more fossil fuel and 14 times more greenhouse gases than a plastic (and even BPA-free) bottle.
Thank you for your comments, hopefully, they will continue to generate discussions. Plastics are a problem, but imagine what it would be like living in today’s world without them. Imagine what it would be like if one was in a hospital and suddenly all plastics were banned. Well, that isn’t likely to happen and the fact that there are more than 150 billion plastic beverage bottles being produced each year means that they are probably going to be around for some time to come. True, we are recycling but the rate here in the U.S. is a miserable 30%....the rest end up in our landfill, streams and oceans.
ReplyDeleteI found your comment on the biogases produced from biodegrading plastic interesting. Our company, ENSO Bottles, is an environmental company that saw a growing plastic problem and decided something needed to be done and quick. We and our partners have developed a PET plastic bottle that will biodegrade in a landfill environment and as you mentioned, during the biodegradation process produce biogases (CO2, Methane). We are promoting landfills that are more efficient at capturing those gases (Bioreactor landfills) and using those gases to produce clean energy. In our area, the gases from standard dry tomb landfills are being captured and sold to power companies.
Additionally, there is a misunderstanding /disagreement from consumers and manufacturers alike as to which types of plastics would be better for the environment. I believe the solutions are obscured somewhat by profit rather than what’s good for our environment. Our bottle, the ENSO biodegradable PET plastic bottle, is the only plastic bottles that biodegrades in an anaerobic or aerobic microbial environment. We know that ENSO isn’t the final answer but we feel that biodegradable plastic can make a difference.
Max
http://www,ensobottles.com
“Bottles for a Healthier Earth”
Post 3, I'm glad you bring up some of these other topics. I can use the article you posted as a topic guideline for my response.
ReplyDeleteExtraction, Processing, and Manufacturing
When you're concerned about the toxins released by creating these products, you can't look at the pollution put out per unit; you need to be observing the number of units. In every 5 minutes, U.S. consumers use 2,000,000 plastic bottles. This ends up being millions of tons of plastic produced only for bottle products.
Sure, producing metal materials causes pollution; producing most of the things you use, including the computer you're typing on, has caused pollution. But we need to be using sustainable products instead of using a trend that depletes our resources in hundreds of billions of small units. The idea behind metal bottles is that less of them are produced.
And for the environmental cost per unit: if you fill a plastic bottle one third full of oil (33%), that's the amount of oil needed to make one plastic bottle. This value is based on manufacturing and storing. This would be the "ecological impact" your article challenges metal products about.
Distribution
Again, if you're concerned that metal bottles are being shipped and using energy this way, you can't be purchasing from any company that outsources production, then. Relating to bottles, however, spring water companies boast as selling points that they've imported their water from exotic locations (Fiji, the currently trendy water beverage). Though you may gain a couple points for the exposés of these companies' habits of filling bottles with tap sources (Aquafina scandal, as you should recall) and therefor saving on distribution costs... supporting these companies supports unethical business practices in which the consumers are probably being lied to a ton more about environmentally harmful production factors, like poor worker conditions. Negative points.
Use
Please refer to my past post that gives statistics directly disproving your article's claim. Because metal surfaces fester exponentially less bacteria than plastic surfaces do, you need not so frequently wash your metal bottle after all. Let it soak in soap overnight as I do, as most metal bottle products shouldn't be cleaned in the dishwasher, as this risks damage. So you've used about a glass of water each week to clean your bottle.
As for wasting this glass of chemically treated water each week, the PepsiCo worker hauling in your 25-pack of plastic water bottles to Costco has probably gone through much more than a glass of water in that time.
Disposal
With the public's growing concern for recycling facilities and opposing a marketplace for safer landfills (look up Michigan's controversial plans to extract methane from landfills to lock into electrical grids, then powering entire communities) people truly are seeking new opportunities to recycle. No, customers don't throw out their bottles when they lose the tops, as your article suggests, they buy a new one for $3-4 (www.h2ox2.com/store/).
Then, after years of use, these bottles are recycled. As I've cited in a past entry, recycling an aluminum bottle will save up to 95% in energy and 95% in air pollution. (The League of Women Voters (1993). The Garbage Primer. New York: Lyons & Burford. pp. 35–72). Your article has also outlined why recycling stainless steele can be so beneficial to us, as well.
Thanks for the help with my points.
Terraflex Industries is a leading manufacturer of extruded plastic products, technical hoses and PVC compounds. Delivering custom solutions in PVC compounds for all technical, industrial and commercial applications.
ReplyDeleteChoose a PVC compound that has high resistance against the environment and wear and tear. Some applications for rigid PVC compounds include; packaging materials, PVC shrink and sheets, bottles, shades, Helix reinforced hoses, moldings and trim boards.
ReplyDelete