Biodegradable products

For a wide range of eco-friendly green packaging and biodegradable bags Polybags Ltd has stored and manufacture biodegradable products to suit your needs and help towards a better environment.

Why Degradable or Biodegradable?

"Conventional plastics do not break down. Litter and landfill waste take a very long time to degrade. Litter is visual pollution, an eyesore that regulations and educational programs have failed to eliminate. In landfills, not only do ordinary plastics degrade very slowly but also anything contained within them may not reach their full degradation potential. This results in a needless waste of valuable landfill space." Source Biodegradable bags at Packagingknowledge.com

Compostable Plastic

Compostable Plastic is plastic which is any plastic "capable of undergoing biological decomposition in a compost site as part of an available program, such that the plastic is not visually distinguishable and breaks down to carbon dioxide, water, inorganic compounds, and biomass, at a rate consistent with known compostable materials (e.g. cellulose). and leaves no toxic residue." American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM).

In order for a plastic to be called compostable it needs to biodegrade (break down into carbon dioxide, water, biomass at the same rate as cellulose), disintegrate (the material is indistinguishable in the compost, that it is not visible and needs to be screened out) and not the biodegradation does produce any toxic material and the compost can support plant growth.

Biodegradable Plastic

Biodegradable Plastic is plastic which will degrade from the action of naturally occurring microorganisms. over a period of time. Note that there is no requirement for leaving "no toxic residue", and as well as no requirement for the time it needs to take to biodegrade.

Degradable Plastic

Degradable Plastic is plastic which will undergo a significant change in its chemical structure under specific environmental conditions resulting in a loss of some properties. Please note that there is no requirement that the plastic has to be degrade from the action of "naturally occurring microorganism" or any of the other criteria required for compostable plastics.

A plastic therefore may be degradable but not biodegradable or it may be biodegradable but not compostable.

If you want to know about eco-friendly bags please visit the eco bags section of ecobag.uk.com

Biodegradable or Biodegradeable?

One last note: (some of our domains are actually misspelt!) it is very common to misspell biodegradable as biodegradeable and the same happens with degradable as degradeable. In fact when written down the word biodegradable often looks like an incorrect spelling and has been known to be corrected to biodegradeable by some overzealous and missinformed editors.