Plastics occupy such a large part of our lives, from life-saving medical IV bags to our everyday drink cups, that it is near impossible to imagine, much less create a modern lifestyle without them.
But most plastics are not biodegradable, nor are they marketed as reusable, causing them to occupy about 94% of the waste found in America’s landfills. This is why recently the wave of items like reusable grocery bags have come into vogue, but not every plastic item can be replaced with a reusable equal.
This is where GreenWare comes in. I fist ran across the cups at a school function. The small plastic cup promoting the fact that is was “made from corn, environmentally sustainable, and 100% compostable.” was too good a claim to resist.
GreenWare is made by Fabri-Kal, a popular plastic-container manufacturer. Their GreenWare line features both drink cups and recently added “portion cups” for storing and presenting food. The plastic is a biopolymer developed by NatureWorks and derived exclusively from plants rather than oils, making the source of raw materials renewable, but also making the cup itself a biodegradable product.
The amount of plastic waste we produce is at critical levels, mainly because we view plastics as a given material, and one was can use once and then quickly forget. But plastics, which were and still are marketed as non-reusable, cannot be quickly forgotten. They end up in landfills and ocean debris, and are known to exude toxins as they slowly break down. Plastics recycling programs, while marginally effective, have not been standardized and continue to be highly labor intensive, making the process slow and expensive.
Of course, their convenience is undeniable. Reusing materials is out of fashion now days, and one worry following bioplastics like GreenWare is that more apathy will continue to follow the use of plastics now that people feel plastics to be an undetrimental product. Others find GreenWare to be a spark of hope. We seem too dependent on plastics to give them up so easily, and maybe our weaning must begin with small steps.
Either way, GreenWare proves to be just one of many bourgeoning products based on environmentally friendly techniques.
