Earth-friendly plastic?
There is no question about it, plastic–especially disposable plastic products like water bottles–has an image problem. Faced with consumer defections to more “earth-friendly” materials, the plastics industry has worked steadily to develop “greener” plastic alternatives.
Until recently the fruits of these efforts have been meager. But now ENSO bottles has come out with a new earth friendly plastic bottle solution.” What makes the ENSO bottle earth-friendly? One word: biodegradability.
Although petroleum-based, ENSO bottles have organic compounds added to them that enable them to biodegrade in both anaerobic (landfill) and aerobic (compost) environments. But because they are petroleum-based they are also recyclable: so whether they are thrown in the garbage or in the recycling bin, ENSO bottles don’t add to our growing mountains of trash.
ENSO bottles also have end-of-life advantages over biobased bottles, which cannot be recycled and can only biodegrade in industrial composting facilities (which–when they exist at all–are not easily accessible).
Given that 12% of our landfill space is taken up with plastic, an en-mass switch to ENSO could make a significant dent in our trash pile. But at what cost? With biodegradability comes greenhouse gas emissions, which as a recent treehugger post points out, may negate the benefits of freeing up landfill space. In addition, what happens to the petroleum distillates and other compounds in an ENSO bottle when it biodegrades? Do these present an environmental hazard?
And how do ENSO bottles stack up when you take into account life cycle stages? For example, when you look at sourcing, ENSO bottles are neither more nor less earth-friendly than other disposable plastic bottles: they are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource whose extraction and processing is the number one contributor to global warming.
Finally, questions remain–for me at least–about safety. While ENSO Bottles meet FDA criteria for food grade packaging, so does BPA, which we now know poses significant health risks, especially to fetuses, infants and young children. This isn’t to say that ENSO bottles are unsafe, only that it isn’t clear to me that they are.
Isn’t the most earth-friendly solution to simply forgo disposable plastic products at least when there are safe, reusable alternatives? But that’s the rub: there are times when there aren’t safe, reusable alternatives. When you’re at the airport, or example. Or when you are having an event or function in a facility without a kitchen.
But of course these examples only raise a broader question: is it worth all the time, money and talent that ENSO has invested in creating a biodegradable bottle, or would that time, money and talent be better invested in another technology that might move us further along the path towards a sustainable future?
I may answer this question one way but clearly other people would answer it other ways. There are many paths that will take us towards a sustainable future; we need many paths. On the other hand, some paths may be dead ends, and I think it’s worth discussing–even arguing over–what makes some paths more promising than others.
2 Comments
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Rachel,
Great points you bring up in your article about Earth-Friendly Plastics. I only wish I would have seen this when it was published.
You are absolutely correct in that there are many paths and there has to be. We have so many aspects of our lives that require improvements in order to make the future cleaner and healthier.
ENSO Bottles do not contain any BPA, in fact PET or #1 plastics don’t contain BPA. BPA is found in polycarbonate and other more ridged plastics.
You are also correct in that our solution still includes fossil fuel based plastics. Our long-term goal is to absolutely move away from fossil fuels, unfortunately at this time there are no bioplastic solutions that are a good alternative. Almost all of them on the market utilize more fossil fuels in the growing and processing than our fossil fuel based plastics. We are working on projects to develop renewable bioplastics that will actually be a benefit for the environment.
In the meantime, ENSO is the best solution we have today and it get us moving in the right direction.
Plastics made with ENSO are fully recyclable in the standard recycle stream and if placed into a microbial environment, such as found in landfills or in nature, the plastic will naturally biodegrade, leaving behind biogases and soil.
We would love to have you join us on facebook and let us know your thoughts so that we can all work together to solve our pollution problem.
Sincerely,
Max Clark
ENSO Bottles
Comment by Max Clark — March 2, 2011 @ 11:30 am
Max,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments and clarifications about the benefits of ENSO. I think we are in agreement about the need for multiple paths to a sustainable future and in particular about the need to both reduce our resource consumption, and find ways to consume that are less damaging to the earth and our health.
Since I wrote this post, I have done further research on PET plastics & I am beginning to become concerned that they, too, post health risks due to leaching. Here are some links to studies on this issue:
http://bit.ly/ch2wTr
http://bit.ly/gytmfh
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this if you care to share them.
Thanks again,
Rachel
Comment by Rachel White — March 2, 2011 @ 8:06 pm