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Corn-based beats petroleum-based, particularly if you have easy access to recycling facilities, but avoid plastics when you can.

COCKTAIL FACT

Corny beginnings: Eva Mendes, Charlize Theron, and Naomi Watts all appeared in sequels to Children of the Corn.

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home › tip library › PLA Plastic

Plastic made from corn is biodegradable, but is it really better for the environment?

The Bite

So there’s this new polymer popping up on shelves from Wild Oats to Wal-Mart. It’s made from corn, so it’s biodegradable. But before doing the green victory jig, decide for yourself whether the stuff (which is often made from genetically-modified corn) is really the best thing since sliced cornbread, or if manufacturers are guilty of plastic perjury.

The Benefits

Growing corn uses a ton of water (the water used to raise one acre could run your dishwasher over 42,000 times), and you have to find alocal drop-spot for used containers, but the benefits of PLA(polylactic acid) plastics are significant:

Corn-based plastic doesn’t emit toxic fumes when incinerated, and requires 20-50% less fossil fuel to make as compared to regular plastics.
An affordable alternative. Corn-based straws or cups won’t break the bank.
Fully biodegradable within 47 days, but you can’t just throw it on your backyard’s compost pile. To decompose, PLA plastic requires a temperature of up to 284 degrees.

Personally Speaking

We’re both big fans of avoiding all plastics whenever possible - including the corn ones. But for those times when we forget our SIGG bottles and have to go for bottled water, we grab Biota (in corn plastics) when available, as it’s the better Biting choice.

Wanna Try?

Wild Oats - return your used PLA-based containers at most locations.
Nat-Ur Cutlery - corn-based plastic utensils ($16/240 pc).
Biota Spring Water - the first PLA-bottled water, available at many natural foods stores. Find out if it’s sold in your area at their website.

May 10,2006

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All editorial suggestions in this tip are the result of testing and a preference for the tip topic. No advertiser has paid to have its company referenced in the tip. For more information, please read our Editorial Policy.

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PLA Plastic Vs GMO

Wow, so sound more scientific than sassy today! I am going to "go off" on GMOs and tell what I know, what I think, because I really honor you Biters' opinions, and would love to know your thoughts.

GMOs can help solve world hunger? Or create a better plastic? TBD, IMHO.

It's so tempting to want to grab onto science as the cure-all for the world's ills. But there are times where it might just be the cause of those ills - just take a look at the GMO situation:

Here is the deal.....

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are crafted in a lab, and sold to food companies for larger yields. Mainly they pull strains from one DNA source to boost a certain quality in a food plant. For example, monkey butt skin into a tomato seed to make the tomatoes travel better, you know - thicker, rosier skin. (Okay, that is a fake example, but there are some pretty wild real world examples out there).

Not much testing has gone on, AND we don't know enough to know the potential effects. Somehow, the big AgriBusiness guys have skirted having to go through testing.
A few years ago Monsanto had to pull back some genetically modified corn products. Remember when taco shells were causing very harmful allergic reactions?
More than 3500 areas in Europe have been established as intentionally free of genetically modified organisms.
GMO commodities are patented, meaning farmers cannot save seeds from each crop. This is costing them a fortune, and of course all the large agribusiness folks own the patents.
Proponents say that we need this in order to feed the world. Not really. There are million reasons that organic, small scale farming would feed the world, for a much longer time (ie: the soil quality doesn't depreciate and erode with organic farming methods). To see one of my personal heroes discuss how, see the Joel Salatin's interview (leading author, speaking and sustainable farmer) here: http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/Interviews/Interviews5.htm.

When I was trying to wrap my head around this issue, I asked my boss at the time, a brilliant economist at World Resources Institute, Paul Faeth. He said "Jen, do you know that native, unaltered corn is really only this big?" (and then he made a 3 inch gap between his pointer finger and thumb.) We keep this corn sheltered and growing in some place in Mexico. It lives there, and keeps naturally modifying itself to keep ahead of the pest-types that develop, and adjust to weather changes. Each year we go in to harvest some of this original seed source, and then engineer the bigger stuff from that. Only nature can compete with nature. So now with GMO plants, what if some of their pollen or seeds flew into this area, and corrupted our seed source for corn? Can you imagine how quickly our food markets would tumble, and the massive hunger that would arise?

Yeah, so I am paraphrasing, but that was the gist. It blew me away that we are really messing with nature so much. After all, the true system (ie: our ecosystem) is beyond comprehension in its synergistic, symbiotic magnificence.

I am sure it is all-too-tempting for the big food companies to go the quick and dirty route, and get X% instaprofit. Plus, their quarterly stock market price doesn't reward for planning for the longer term. That is why it is up to us to be slightly educated on it, and buy organic when possible, and try to avoid GMO foods and the companies that use them.

Off to cross Cricket with a grasshopper. (Seriously, she really loves to eat grasshoppers.)

Jen

Biter Comments...

I really don't want to come off as overcritical, because I do think that what you do in the Ideal Bite is really great! But there's this thing that's been bothering me for a bit, although I'm sure that you're vastly more educated on the subject than I am...pointers for stuff to read would be appreciated. For here, I agree that it's really sketchy that they haven't been required to do much testing. My issue is with this: you said, "It’s so tempting to want to grab onto science as the cure-all for the world’s ills." From what I've seen of the Ideal Bite, you guys seem to have a tendency to do the opposite--to grab onto something immediately because it's labeled with "natural." I just want to point out that chemicals don't necessarily mean not good for us. Yes, the ecosystem and our bodies are all very complicated, and we don't know much about a lot of things and we could use a lot more testing...but the knee-jerk reaction to promote natural as good and synthetic as bad isn't very fair.

Posted by: Katherine | May 10, 2006 at 12:42 AM

It's almost sounds like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. While PLA plastic does have advantages it has disadvantages. This can be said for practically everything though. In terms of genetically modified foods, we have a plentiful supply of food, but the food might be doing something to us. Touch call. A solution in terms of PLA and plastic would be to just use less of it. Did you know in certain ocean currents there is more plastic in the water than there is plankton? Scary thought when you understand that plastic does not really decompose. A great way to start is thinking where can you reduce plastic use? For me it has to be in my cleaning products. Whenever I finish a bottle, I go back to the store and buy another full-sized bottle. I recently found this product that introduces a refill system so less plastic is used. http://www.greatcleaners.com/glasscleaner.html. It’s a glass cleaner, but maybe they can offer more products.

Posted by: Nevin | May 10, 2006 at 11:59 AM

I would like to second Katherine's comment; I had the same reaction to the notion that science is bad, or science got us into this pickle. I think the truth is that this is what humans do with technology. Let's be a little realistic and agree that we wouldn't be writing blog post comments on our laptop computers in our nice houses with other "good" things without a little science and technology. Instead, consider that perhaps it's not the science that's bad but the nature of humanity to find the worst and most harmful aspects of science first. A great college course I took on the History of Technology asserted that most new technologies were used to improve warfare so that one tribe (or country) could kill another more effectively. For example, the invention of stirrups and spurs was said to give the Britons the advantage they needed to, effectively, take over the world. Heck, the Internet was invented by DARPA (the US Army) as a means of surviving a first strike nuclear attack. So we have a bad history of misusing technology at first, and a modestly good history of making it better, and dare I say even good over time. When steam engines were first invented, they mostly used wood, and by the early 20th century England and the eastern US were almost fully clear cut. Yet now the forests of the US are more than recovered in areas that were once completely barren. So you could say, "Yeah, so we switched to oil", and that's true, but hopefully in the end it's just a 100-year step along the way to something better. The technology to harm sometimes leads us to the awareness of possible harm, and then the the technology to do good. Those who put their heads in the sand end up not being in a position to correct the problems; technology is the genie that is out of the bottle. So GMOs, and agri-business in general are way scarier to me than nuclear bombs mainly because we don't immediately recognize the catastrophic risk to humanity that messing with mother nature could cause. Whereas it's pretty evident how nasty a nuke is. So let's get out this message about GMOs and alternatives and risks in a calm, appropriate way. But let's get it out in a way that recognizes that GMOs are just one smallish step in a much larger issue. The solution to this issue is not to say that science got us into this jamb, but rather that we need to be cautious, and also need to get funding for the science that will help us get out of the jamb. And, yeah, before it's too late.

Posted by: Tom Harrison | May 10, 2006 at 05:51 PM

First off let me state that I am 100% behind alternative methods; however, that being said I have one very major concern about plastic products being manufactured from corn. I am deathly allergic to corn. So what is going to happen to people like myself who inadvertantly purchase something that is corn-free but packaged in plastic made from corn? Are the users of these containers going to clearly label them? Or is this going to be a new version of Russian roulette? And if you want to have an idea how much of an impact being allergic to corn is to those of us afflected, I'd suggest you go to your kitchen/bathroom and start reading labels. So in addition to the common corn, there is dextrose, maltodextrose, to name a few. One of these days I should see if I can get a degree in biochemistry because of all the perservatives that are by-products of corn. And don't forget your supplements.

Posted by: Ginny Goldberg | May 10, 2006 at 08:36 PM

How long does it take for PLA to decompose in a landfill?

Posted by: Katie Wied | October 18, 2007 at 11:16 AM