More than 350 million tons of plastic waste pollutes the land, rivers and oceans every year. Pollution gets worse with some solutions that don’t actually solve the problem, including the following:
- Biobased Plastic: This plastic is made from biomass (corn, potato flour, wood pulp, or sugar cane). However, this plastic is not environmentally friendly because the processing system makes the biomass structure no longer natural. In fact, with a biomass content of at least 20%, a plastic can be said to be biobased.
- Biodegradable Plastics: Some brands of these plastics are designed to decompose into CO2, water, and biomass by microorganisms. However, this plastic can only decompose under certain environmental conditions, including the temperature must be >50°C. This plastic also takes more than three years to decompose, thereby still causing waste accumulation.
- Oxo(bio)degradable Plastics: These plastics contain conventional petroleum derivatives that contain additives (pro-oxidants), so they are disintegrated, previously misinterpreted as biodegradable, into microplastics and nanoplastics. This type of plastic is very dangerous, because the resulting microplastics and nanoplastics can enter the food chain or be inhaled, causing serious health problems. Autism, diabetes, pregnancy disorders, and cancer are some of the diseases associated with the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in the human body. Therefore, we must start a sustainable lifestyle by intelligently choosing the right solution. Biopac is a solution for single-use packaging because it is completely compostable.