Another eco myth? Study finds plant-based utensils do NOT break down in the environment like activists claim
Plant-based plastics have been touted as the environmentally conscious alternative to typical petroleum-based products.
But many so-called 'bioplastic' products failed to decompose after more than a year in the ocean or on land, a new study shows.
The products have become increasingly common, with companies like Starbucks, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Lavazza, Lego, Nestle, Lush Cosmetics, and Kelloggs using them for all sorts of packaging, either as single-use plastic items or as linings for other materials.
Previous research has shown that paper straws contain cancer-causing PFAS, known as 'forever chemicals' because they remain in the environment for many, many years.
And the new study suggests that even if these bioplastics are not toxic, they don't appear to break down either.
Given the increasing popularity of bioplastics, researchers with The 5 Gyres Institute set out to see how these products would fare when thrown in the ocean or left by the side of the road - common fates for plastic bags, bottles, straws, and forks.
They placed bioplastics at multiple sites on land and sea, alongside conventional plastics and some made from wood or paper for comparison.
Almost none of these products fully wore away after 64 weeks, and some were virtually unchanged. Those that did wear away tended to break down into smaller pieces, rather than decomposing.
The bioplastic industry is valued at about $11.6 billion worldwide, and it is expected to grow about 19 percent per year.
Products left on land tended to break down more slowly than those left in the water, but even after 64 weeks, 78 percent of the bioplastic items remained in some form.
'Bioplastics' is a category that includes both biobased plastics made from renewable sources like vegetable fats, corn starch, straw, sawdust, or recycled food waste, and what are known as 'biopolymers,' plastics produced by microorganisms like bacteria or yeast, which are fed fats or sugars.
The study mainly examined PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate) and PLA (polylactic acid) products, which are both biopolymers.
Researchers deposited 22 different products at 6 sites in California, Maine, and Florida - one on land and one at sea in each state. Seventeen of the products were bioplastics. For comparison, they included three polyethylene, one bamboo, and one paper product.
Mesh bags held the objects in place, while still exposing them to the elements. Land-based items were buried, and sea items were dangled into the water.
Researchers retrieved the items at fixed periods to track how much they had broken down: 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 16 weeks, 32 weeks, and 64 weeks.
As expected, none of the polyethylene products broke down after 64 weeks. The bamboo forks did not, either.
The paper straws at all three aquatic sites broke down after 32 weeks, but only the land-based ones in Maine were fully gone by 64 weeks.
The bioplastics followed a similar pattern: Out of those that actually did break down, most were in the water. Overall, about 78 out of 102 bioplastic items remained intact.
The 5 Gyres Institute is an environmental nonprofit funded mostly by donations from corporations and charitable foundations. Charity Navigator rated it three out of four stars.
The study's results were published in a report on the group's website.
One of the study's main conclusions is that consumers should be aware of the difference between products that are 'compostable' versus those that are 'biodegradable.'
All compostable products are biodegradable, but that does not mean they will break down while they float around in the ocean or lie in the dirt.
Part of the issue is that, even though the products may start life as natural ingredients like corn, chemical tweaking yields a chemical structure almost the same as regular plastics made from petroleum products.
Most of them require high-heat composting facilities, and most will never get there - and many end up in garbage incinerators just like any other trash.
Bioplastics are rarely disposed properly, previous research has shown, making them potentially worse for global warming than conventional plastics. Environmental groups have called them a 'false solution' to the problem of plastic waste.
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The Impossible Energy 'Transition'
After two weeks of negotiation, the United Nations climate conference in Dubai agreed last week to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Left unanswered is whether governments are supposed to do that by reducing supply, reducing demand or both. A lot rides on the answer, but neither would affect the climate much.
In the demand-side scenario, technology saves the day with cost-competitive renewables. This is the vision of the International Energy Agency, according to which the more rapid the transition from fossil fuels, the more precipitous the decline in fossil-fuel prices. In its “Net Zero Emissions” scenario, oil demand drops faster than supply this decade, pushing oil prices below $30 a barrel soon after 2030, which corresponds to $1-a-gallon gasoline.
Yet even with fossil-fuel prices near historic highs, effective renewable substitutes are nowhere near cost-competitive. They’d have to get cheaper still to compete with $30-a-barrel oil. And in developed countries, especially the U.S., it’s impossible to get permits quickly enough for the staggering amount of renewable capacity that would be needed.
In the supply-side approach, governments would slash oil production or impose rationing, hoping to make fossil fuels so expensive that renewables are the only option. This is the dark vision of “Stop Oil” and Greta Thunberg. But as long as renewable substitutes aren’t immediately available and oil and gas remain necessary, a small reduction in supply causes prices to soar. That means windfall profits for energy companies, scarcity for everyone else, and electoral danger for the governments responsible. Ms. Thunberg claims that climate change is a “death sentence” for the poor, but the poor are far more vulnerable to disruptions in energy supply. In the 1970s, an oil boycott aimed at the U.S. caused famines in Africa.
While the stop-oil view was popular at Dubai, there were enough adults in the room to keep the conference from committing to it. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 C” (the Paris Agreement’s proposed limit on 21st-century temperature increases), said conference president Ahmed al Jaber, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman dared countries to try to choke off the oil supply: “Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”
Poor countries are clear-eyed about the danger of energy poverty. “We are not going to compromise with the availability of power for growth,” said India’s minister for power, R.K. Singh. China has more coal plants under construction than are in operation in the U.S. Few rich countries have announced plans to stop drilling for oil or gas, and none of those are major producers. Even President Biden ran away from increasing the gasoline tax as soon as prices went above $3 a gallon in the summer of 2021.
The administration’s answer to this conundrum is to defer political consequences via the regulatory state. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to require that all coal and natural-gas plants shut down or adopt unproven zero-carbon technologies by 2038. Another EPA proposal would require 62% of all cars sold in America to be fully electric by 2032.
Assuming they survive court challenges and future administrations, they would impose soaring prices and reduced mobility on Americans. They would have almost no impact on global temperatures unless other countries, including China and India, also commit to energy poverty. The question is how much damage these policies will do before they’re abandoned.
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What could happen if we just stopped oil? Six billion might die
It's difficult to see how an immediate ban on fossil fuels will allow civilisation to continue and flourish
Many of us have been exasperated by the antics of Just Stop Oil protesters. Now, I believe that these are well-meaning and committed to their cause and I am sure that they think that they are trying to save the planet in the best way they can think of – gain publicity, get people talking and influence politicians.
But what would happen if we literally just stopped oil tomorrow and did without the natural resources on which the world, its economies and populations depend? The answer: most likely six billion people would die within a year.
I am going to assume the “oil” in Just Stop Oil means fossil fuels – so oil, gas and coal. I am also going to assume that we have today’s technological knowledge and infrastructure, so we are talking about stopping fossil fuels now, not at some unspecified time in the future.
Day 1 – no more mining of coal; the world’s oil wells shut down; the world’s gas fields likewise. The first to feel the change would be gas users.
Gas stocks held above ground are typically not that high. So the UK would quite quickly, say in 10 or 15 days, have to turn off its gas distribution system as it would be unable to maintain pressure.
This would mean in turn that the domestic supply would be shut down too – gas would stop flowing, and some 21 million households (74pc of the population) would no longer have heating, hot water, and cooking facilities. In their panic, people might turn to electricity for their cooking and heating, but wait…
The UK electricity grid relies on natural gas as its “buffer” energy source. Every day, demand varies according to consumer demand, and the other main energy supplier, renewables, are highly variable and can only power the grid when gas is picking up the lion’s share of the gap between their output and consumer demand.
So the moment that the main gas distribution system is de-pressurised, the grid-balancing system fails and power cuts ensue.
It is impossible to gauge how extensive these power cuts would be, but the grid would be so seriously compromised, possibly fatally, that they may be widespread and permanent.
Electricity demand would have rocketed through the switch to electric space heating, cooking and water-heating, and so it seems very likely that the sudden excess demand would be undeliverable, and therefore that the grid would spiral into uncontrollability.
No electricity means no communication systems – no mobiles, no TV, and no running water. With no power and no heating, vulnerable people start to die.
Initially just the elderly in their own homes, then in hospitals when the diesel back-up generators run out of fuel, but then new existential problems emerge for ordinary people in the form of food availability and distribution.
Day 25 – I’m probably being generous with the timing here, but diesel and petrol are likely to have run out by day 25. This means that food distribution would fail, and so the population, most of which are entirely dependent on bought food, begin to starve.
In dire national emergencies, international help is often forthcoming, but in this case, this scenario is taking place, in largely identical ways and timing, across the developed and developing world. Only isolated rural communities, agriculturally self-sufficient, would be relatively unaffected. So no international rescue mission.
Day 50 – in the urban world, many people would be near death from starvation. In the 50 days since the ending of fossil fuel supply, law and order would have broken down, and I suspect that mass conflict and slaughter would have been taking place with the increasingly desperate search for the means of survival.
But disease would be on the rampage too, with no power, no water supply and no sewage flow, so cholera, dysentery and all the other Victorian diseases of crowding would take over.
Day 100 – just three months or so since the world just stopped oil – my guess is that around half of the world’s population (say four billion people) would be dead. The first to die would be the urban poor; then the middle and upper classes, with money and status becoming increasingly irrelevant with the passage of time.
The survivors would be largely rural, able to live off local agricultural produce, or live off dwindling food stocks.
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Why the green elites hate Christmas
Ignore the doom-mongers, the killjoys, the snobs. Don’t let your week of freedom be clouded by the wailing of upper-class neurotics who think the world will end if we get to do what we want. Instead, eat, drink and – the greatest rebellion of all – be merry.
Not content with blocking roads and ruining the snooker, now Just Stop Oil’s glum toffs are coming for Christmas. Nothing horrifies plummy greens more than the thought of millions of plebs buying gifts, getting sloshed and eating dead birds. So they intend to do something about it. They’ll be spray-painting Christmas trees and singing ‘climate Christmas carols’. Then there’s the ace up their sleeve. Their greatest act of torment against the British public yet. A Christmas single.
It’s called ‘We Tried’. The singer is Louise Harris. You remember her – she’s the eco-zealot who wept on a motorway gantry during a JSO stunt. ‘I’m here because I don’t have a future!’, she blubbed. ‘Why does it take young people like me up on a fucking gantry on the M25 for you to listen?!’, she wailed. Oh sweetheart, we’re still not listening. Now the Cambridge grad is turning on the waterworks once more as she warbles: ‘Take me where the birds still fly / Cos smoke fills up our sky.’ Deep.
‘This song woke me up’, says Brian Eno, making it sound like it interrupted his afternoon nap. It’s a ‘fucking horrific, terrifying and tragic’ song and you must ‘listen to it’, says naturalist fruitcake Chris Packham. For five long, mournful minutes Ms Harris sings and sobs against a backdrop of factories, war and natural disasters. It’s a deathly ballad, the bastard child of Chris de Burgh and Greta Thunberg. ‘Just Stop Singing!’, as a headline in the Daily Mail aptly puts it.
JSO hopes it will be the Christmas No1. Fat chance. That spot is Shane MacGowan’s. What’s more, people don’t take kindly to being lectured by the emotionally incontinent upper classes during the season to be jolly. Ms Harris must know this. In 2022, she invaded the pitch when Spurs were playing West Ham, whereupon legions of fans pelted her with drinks. She fled to Facebook to boohoo about being ‘hated by the majority of the general public’. There’s an easy fix for that, Louise: don’t interrupt the football and don’t release rubbish singles.
There’s something about Christmas that always brings out the well-off eco-aware in a rash. For years the right-on have bemoaned the waste and indulgence of the holiday season. ‘[F]or God’s sake stop trashing the planet’ with your ‘junk’ gifts, said Guardian Scrooge George Monbiot a decade ago. We’ve had Buy Nothing Christmas, an outgrowth of Buy Nothing Day, which encouraged us to ‘bypass the tinsel, the tree and the tat’ and ‘go cold turkey on consumerism’ (boom boom). ‘All I want for Christmas is a lower rate of consumption’, say headlines in the pompous press. Just Stop Oil’s party-pooping is only the latest expression of this weird aristocratic derision for Christmas.
JSO has already sang climate carols outside Keir Starmer’s house. ‘On the first day of Christmas, Keir Starmer gave to me / Genocide from the North Sea’, the loons intoned, because apparently Sir Keir isn’t sufficiently committed to phasing out oil-pumping in Scotland. ‘All I want for Christmas is for oil-rig workers to lose their jobs’ would have been a more honest lyric. Just Stop Oil’s German wing has defiled Christmas trees with JSO’s trademark orange paint. Furious Christmas shoppers in Strasbourg rose up against the paint-splattering grinches, leading to one of my favorite headlines of the year: ‘Eco protesters manhandled by angry public after spraying Xmas market tree orange.’
There’s a powerful whiff of snobbery to this Christmasphobia. The annual handwringing over holiday ‘waste’ feels a lot like ‘wealthy leftists talking down to the working class about their life choices’, wrote Simon Copland a few years ago. Indeed. From the pulpit of the New York Times comment pages to the weepy pleas of apocalyptic greens, every Christmas the well-off reprimand workers for eating, drinking and spending too much. In the words of a writer for the NYT, ‘Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, Americans produce a colossal amount of waste’, causing ‘landfills [to] swell beyond all reason’, and making ‘whales starve because of the plastic they have consumed’. Oh, stop it! Can we not have one week off from the finger-wagging?
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/12/19/why-the-green-elites-hate-christmas/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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