Battle Rages Over Biodegradable Plastics : Environment: Placentia diaper firm is part of debate focusing on whether the products are an ecological solution or part of the problem.

Two years ago, Placentia businessman Bob Chickering was looking for ways to expand beyond the tiny business of selling cotton swabs when he discovered the disposable diaper. It looked like a good business, and one of his researchers owned some useful patents.

But Chickering saw that the environmental problems posed by plastics were a threat to disposable diapers, and it was also crucial to avoid competing head-to-head with the powerful masters of the $3.5-billion industry, Procter & Gamble Co. and Kimberley-Clark Corp.

There seemed to be an elegant solution to both problems: a biodegradable diaper that would disintegrate after it was thrown away. It seemed one could be made using a cornstarch-laced plastic resin that had been available for years, and it could be niche-marketed to the tree-hugging set.

Chickering’s company, American Enviro Products, began marketing Bunnies as an environmentally sound diaper last July and had sold 40 million by the end of 1989.

But today, Chickering finds himself embroiled in a heated national debate over whether biodegradable plastics--which are also used in some plastic bags and other packaging products--are part of the solution to the waste-disposal crisis, or part of the problem.

It’s a debate that has produced some strange bedfellows: environmental groups have joined with Procter & Gamble in calling biodegradable plastics a fraud, while a hodgepodge of plastics vendors and agribusiness firms have suddenly begun preaching the need for urgent action on the garbage crisis.

And a seemingly straightforward question of science--do these plastics biodegrade, or not--has been buried beneath the complicated politics of environmental protection.

Using biodegradable products is “the difference between doing something and doing nothing,” proclaims the National Corn Growers Assn., a powerful supporter of cornstarch-enhanced plastic, in full-page ads in USA Today. But the Environmental Defense Fund and other environmental groups counter that even if the plastics do biodegrade, they will only inhibit efforts to cut down on the growing mountains of solid waste.

Chickering, a genial man who doesn’t pretend to understand the complicated chemistry of bio-degradability, concedes that biodegradability isn’t a cure-all. “It’s not a simple issue, but we’re very comfortable with the technology,” he said. “The research shows that cornstarch-based plastics break down faster than any other.”

Rmed International, a tiny company based in Sedona, Ariz., that markets its Tendercare diapers in health-food stores and by mail-order, is far less modest. The firm asserts unequivocally in its product literature that its plastic--which is produced by the giant agriculture company Archer-Daniel-Midland--”will break down completely into carbon dioxide and water in U.S. landfills.”

Opponents of biodegradables, such as Environmental Defense Fund senior scientist Richard Denison, say that is nonsense. “Even materials that are readily degradable don’t degrade in landfills, where there’s very little moisture or oxygen,” he said.

Ironically, efforts to prevent landfills from contaminating the air and ground water have resulted in new designs that effectively entomb the garbage and prevent degradability, sanitation experts say.

Denison also asserted that even if the plastics do degrade, they can release toxic materials--such as cadmium and lead--that are used to color the plastics. And even under ideal conditions, critics contend that the cornstarch-based plastics simply break down into tiny particles. The cornstarch is eaten away so the plastic appears to disintegrate, but the rugged plastic polymer molecules remain in the environment to be eaten by unsuspecting fish and fowl, Denison and others maintain.

Gialiana Tesoro, a professor of polymer chemistry at Polytechnic University of New York, said the claim of a complete breakdown of the plastic is “incomplete and misleading,” if not an outright lie. “Every organic material will ultimately degrade,” she noted, adding that all plastics are made from petroleum products, which are organic materials. But the speed at which that happens depends on the specific composition of the plastic and the environmental conditions.

“It’s an extremely complicated issue,” she sighed.

In fact, many scientists say there is not yet a definitive answer to the question of whether biodegradable plastics really break down completely, and under what circumstances. The Federal Trade Commission and the California attorney general’s office, which have opened investigations into the validity of advertising claims about biodegradability, are wading through contradictory studies on the matter, and many more studies are in the works. The final answer may be still be some years off.

In the meantime, it is probably safe to say the biodegradable products break down somewhat faster than regular plastics, and they break into invisible pieces fairly quickly.

But, environmentalists maintain, the use of biodegradable plastics also gets in the way of sound waste-reduction policies. That’s because they give people the illusion that they are doing something about the plastic problem, when the real solution lies in reducing the use of plastic altogether.

Traditional cotton cloth diapers, for one, are an obvious alternative for the environmentally conscious, though they have to be made and cleaned and thus have some negative environmental effects of their own.

Disposable diapers, which are made mostly of a (degradable) wood-pulp absorbent wrapped in a plastic back sheet, are believed to account for 1% to 2% of all the solid waste in U.S. landfills.

“All plastics represent the throwaway ethic,” said David Tam, solid waste chairman for the Bay chapter of the Sierra Club. “We believe in reusable products.”

Furthermore, biodegradable plastics are incompatible with existing plastic recycling methods, and thus they could impede ongoing efforts to massively increase the amount of plastic that is recycled.

“This will threaten the entire recycling approach,” said Randall Curlee, an economist and waste specialist at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. “I don’t regard biodegradables as part of the solution.”

Of course, plastic recycling is hardly widespread at the moment, and biodegradable proponents claim with some justification that there is no reason in principle that recycling processes can’t be adjusted to accept biodegradable products. Tim Draeger, spokesman of the National Corn Growers Assn., also points out that “trying to recycle diapers is not a practical option” because of the human waste mixed in with the plastic.

Supporters of biodegradable plastics are fighting the environmentalist offensive on a number of fronts. They’ve commissioned more studies on how fast the cornstarch-based plastics break down, supported trial efforts to dispose of them by composting, developed a common standard for what constitutes a recyclable plastic, and advertised the contribution they claim that the plastics can make to the solid waste problem.

But their most convincing argument is one which relates not to the current products, but to future ones. Draeger calls the current biodegradable products the “Model T” of starch-based plastics, with new and even more degradable products to come. Indeed, the New Jersey consumer products firm Warner-Lambert recently announced that it had developed a plastic that could be made entirely from starch.

A product of that sort would indeed satisfy many of the objections to biodegradable products now on the market, and Warner-Lambert’s announcement was lauded by environmentalists. But for Chickering and some of his fellow entrepreneurs, such developments are a mixed blessing. The big consumer products concerns will almost certainly get into the “green” product game with such a material, and that would undercut part of the reasoning that prompted American Enviro Products to use biodegradables.

The success of companies like American Enviro “is going to be short-lived,” predicted Bonita Austen, a consumer products analyst with the investment bank Wertheim Schroeder. When Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark--which Austen said control 49% and 31%, respectively, of the diaper market--find a fully degradable plastic that can make good diapers, they will market the products heavily.

“They’ll make it tough to compete,” said Austen.