Warner-Lambert Announces Starch-Based Degradable Plastic
A surprise player has entered the fray between environmentalists and manufacturers of so-called degradable plastics.
Warner-Lambert Co., best known for its Listerine, Rolaids and other health-care and consumer products, has announced a new plastic resin made “almost entirely” from starch. Its Novon “bio-plastic starch,” as it calls the discovery, differs fundamentally from “degradable” plastics already on the market, which are blends of traditional plastics and starch.
Disposable diapers and trash bags made from blended plastic may contain as little as 5% starch mixed with 95% standard petroleum-based plastic, which does not degrade.
Warner-Lambert ran tests, it says, in which its new plastic degraded completely. The company also points to the environmental benefits of a starch-based product made from renewable agricultural sources, not oil or natural gas.
The new resin was made from starch extracted from potatoes, wheat, rice and corn.
Environmental groups and the financial community are beginning to look at the possibly enormous implications.
“It’s spectacular news,” says Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “To the extent that we could turn away from using depletable fossil fuels . . . it would be wonderful, what we’ve been hoping for.”
“It’s significant,” agrees Jerry Powell, editor of Resource Recycling magazine and Plastics Recycling Update, a newsletter.
The material will likely be welcomed in the marketplace. Public opinion polls consistently show that buyers consider degradability a plus in packaging.
“I can certainly understand the plastic manufacturers’ belief that consumers will be willing to spend more for biodegradable plastics,” says Barry Mannis, vice president and environmental services analyst for Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc. in New York.
At the core of the debate over existing plastics labeled degradable is whether they actually do help the environment.
Blended-plastic manufacturers claim their products break down to benign bits of material that get lost in the landscape.
But many environmentalists object to blended plastics for several reasons.
First, they say, the petroleum-based portion doesn’t truly degrade. No one has yet studied what happens to these plastics, but most environmentalists doubt they end up as benign as claimed. And in too many airtight, watertight landfills, even newspapers and food refuse don’t readily decompose.
But worse than this, to many environmentalists, the blends are substantially weaker than other plastics, requiring more petroleum-based material than would otherwise be used in such items as the plastic grocery bags now commonly used.
Further, the weaker blends and, presumably, the new all-starch resins could cripple chances to develop a recycling system for plastics. Recyclers hope someday to turn used plastic into such items as yard-cleanup bags, park benches or even back into new bottles, and the presence of a lot of non-recyclable material makes separating the different kinds of plastics a major headache.
For this reason, some environmentalists see the new resin’s biggest potential in such applications as fishing nets and crab traps, which would degrade if lost; litter-prone packaging such as six-pack ring holders, or tagged in some way--perhaps with color--to distinguish it from other plastics. It is now standard for medical waste, for instance, to be bagged in red.
