Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

A great article recently reminded me of the challenges we face when we make changes to be more sustainable.  One of these changes is the current compost movement – returning things to the earth from whence they came. The article “Are There Toxins In Your Compost” was especially relevant given more major cities around the world, including our own Vancouver, BC, are expanding weekly collection of yard and food waste for composting, making it easier for everyone to participate. While simple and sustainable, and something I have done for years, not everything everyone tosses in a compost bin should actually be going in there. The problem stems from lack of education, laziness and our world still being filled with products that don’t return to the earth from whence they came.

Common items that show up in a municipal compost, despite the best efforts of city staff and contractors to remove them, include pieces of plastic from all kinds of products: bags, toys, containers – the list goes on. This is a similar scenario to the small plastic particles that are floating around in the ocean right now, creating a toxic soup that gets back into the food chain through the fish that we eat; a process known as bioaccumulation. With compost, the small plastic bits that don’t get filtered out end up in the fields where our food is grown and leach their toxins into the soil, and ultimately the food that we eat.

This is one of the reasons that I am really passionate about the products we develop at Solegear. Our high-performance, compostable plastic, Polysole®, is not only produced using 100% non-toxic and natural feedstocks sourced from the earth, but can also be disposed of in an industrial compost pile at the end of its useful life. Petroleum-based plastics can’t compete when it comes to the lifecycle of compostable plastics, as they require up to 1,000 years to break back down into their organic building blocks. Polysole has been designed to come full circle in under 1 year.

The day is coming, and sooner than we think, when it will be commonplace for the right plastics to end up in our compost bins. I see a time when compostable plastics will be widely encouraged and we won’t have to worry about toxins bioaccumulating in our food chains anymore. A safe, efficient and sustainable approach to making the products that we use everyday, returned to the earth from whence they came. Being a new dad, that’s peace of mind for me as the world gets passed on to future generations.

I’m interested to learn more about plastics you use and what applications you see compostable plastics having a strong future in. Share your stories and comments below, and as always, if you have an idea for a blog post send it my way – I’ll do my best to tackle it!

Toby Reid, Solegear CEO

Every once in a while I’m asked by media, friends and others if I’m worried that bioplastics are a fad that will eventually fizzle out (think MC Hammer puffy pants). While I appreciate concerns shared with me about the dominance of the petroleum industry and if it’s possible for biomass to reach the scale needed for bioplastic manufacturing, I feel quite strongly that not only are bioplastics here to stay, but they’re going to be a surprisingly big part of a positive and future for generations to come. And frankly, I’m not the only optimist in the crowd.

Earlier in May, European Bioplastics shared some startling data with the world, calling for the production of bioplastics to more than double from 2010 to 2015, with production capacity already predicted to pass one million metric tonnes this year alone! To give you an idea of scale, with one million tonnes of bioplastic we could replace every conventional plastic car bumper on new cars sold in North America every year. With the total plastics industry at around 200,000,000 tons, there’s lots more room to grow (no bio-pun intended).

A big change that is referenced in this exciting data is the growth forecast for bio-based durable plastics, that which are still biobased, but used to create products beyond beverage bottles and bags. Forecast production is that biobased durable plastics will hit the one million tonne level in 2015. This category of durable plastics are used for longer life consumer products like children’s toys, personal grooming products and electronic components – things we use every day.

The key to realizing the kind of growth outlined by European Bioplastics is continuing to educate manufacturers, who are stuck in the cycle of using conventional plastic, that bioplastics are up to the task of being just as durable and functional as the usual plastic suspects.

The transition to a bioplastic future, while showing amazing momentum, is never as fast as we in the industry would like but we can continue to drive this progressive change by showcasing what bioplastics can do, which I try to do as regularly as possible. However, your voice also counts to enable change. The bioplastics industry is calling on you to exercise your right to plastic preference – post a comment here on our new blog, let your favourite brands know and speak your mind to regulators and politicians (yes they do love to get your letters and emails, and yes they do read them – they have to). Tell them this is the direction we want our world and its future to go in! A future of bioplastics, along with never wearing MC Hammer pants again, is something our kids will thank us for.

Toby Reid, Solegear CEO