“Plant-based” and “bio-based” plastic alternatives that contain less traditional (petroleum-based) plastic – but not 0% – are potentially worse, not better. Here’s why…
The environmental and health concerns from traditional (petroleum-based) plastics fall into two categories:
- Potential toxicity – specifically, the leaching of toxic petroleum-based starting ingredients (and related plasticizers like BPA or phthalates) into the environment or into your body, and
- Long-lasting microplastics – smaller and smaller pieces of plastic that never completely go away and which are being discovered everywhere in the environment and in tissues throughout the body.
Despite their toxic starting ingredients, traditional plastics have been usable – even for medical devices – because they are so stable and long-lasting. Leaching is a concern, but if it happens, it’s more limited or slow because the material itself resists degradation so strongly.
Unfortunately, this resistance to degradation is exactly what creates the problem of long-lasting microplastics.
So there’s an inevitable catch-22 that makes any amount of petroleum a problem:
- The only way to address the concern of long-lasting microplastics is to make the material biodegradable, but
- If you make it biodegradable and it contains any amount of toxic petroleum-based ingredients, you’ve just made those ingredients significantly more likely to leach into the environment – or you.
The only solution that can solve both concerns together – toxicity and microplastics – is a material that is 100% free from traditional, petroleum-based plastic.
Bonus environmental catch-22: if you have a 100% petroleum-based plastic that is recyclable and you mix it into a plant-based plastic alternative – no matter how small the amount – you can end up with a final material that is completely non-recyclable.
The recycling paths for the two different types of materials are just too different. If you keep them separate, there’s a chance to follow those paths. If you mix them together, you can’t follow either recycling path anymore.
So here again, a “plant-based” or “bio-based” plastic alternative with any amount of traditional-plastic input can be worse, not better.