I see more and more products claiming compostability. I wandered through a local "green" store recently and found a few items worth looking at...
First were these cool, really thin bamboo plates. They were designed to be used one time and composted, for $12.00 per pack of eight! A $1.50 a plate! I don't really have any "compostable money" but this sure looks like the equivalent.
Then there are more practical compostable plates made from "bagasse", in this case, sugar cane stalks. They look and feel like thick paper and are a nice shade of a creamy grey color. These seem infinately more practical that bamboo throwaways, so I ask about them.
The idea is, because the plates aren't recycled, (because they will be dirty), they are thrown away! They should go to the landfill where in theory they will quickly decompose. Or, they advised, they have a friend who runs his used plates through the lawnmower and then composts them???
There are so many things wrong with this I dont know where to start.
First, assuming that a plate will decompose anerobically in a landfill is a stretch. If it does in fact decompose, it will produce methane, a virulent greenhouse gas.
If you want to start up that two cycle lawn mower to mulch up your plates you're contributing black carbon and regular CO2 to the atmosphere. Then, if you or any guests have had meat on their plates (this person referenced could easily be a vegetarian), then adding that to your compost heap would in fact attract critters in droves. The plates are compostable but maybe not digestable.
I do have a "plastic" fork made from corn that is advertised as compostable...so far its been in my compost heap for seven months and looks brand new. It may eventually break down but a bunch of those in my pile would have made the rest of the compost useless unless I picked out all this so called "compostable" stuff.
Bottom Line - I feel sorry for the companies making these items, and the purveyors of such goods. It's not sustainable. You would be better off using reusable plates...and cleaning them, or just buying the cheap paper ones and throwing them away. If they were made from recycled paper, that would be better still.
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I use regular plates at home, but I get the degradable containers made out of what looks like pressed paper which our supermarket deli area now has there. I rip them up and put them in my compost pile, where they do eventually degrade. No meat eaters in my house. Why someone would run over these with a lawn mower, I can't imagine.
ReplyDelete(I've been too busy to look up my gas bill details, maybe sooner or later.)
Maybe somebody should invent the equivalent of a garbage compactor but it's a compost shredder for your kitchen.
ReplyDeletePour in the paper, food etc a viola' shredded mess for your compost pile...
I don't seem to be able to get a Post a Comment panel for the lead blog, so here that comment is:
ReplyDeleteLet's say you drive 100 miles:
50 mpg car: 2 gals.
34 mpg: 2.94 gals.
28 mpg: 3.57 gals.
18 mpg: 5.56 gals.
50 vs. 34 savings: 2.94-2= 0.94 gals.
28 vs. 18 savings: 5.56-3.57=1.99 gals.
So, you save more gas with the 18 to 28 switch, but that's a little misleading because the reason you save more is they're both pigging out.