Listing on London’s Aim market today is Plantic Technologies, an Australian company that has developed a low-cost fully biodegradable soft plastic based on corn starch. This is potentially wonderful news for the environment.
For a start, traditional plastics are manufactured from non-renewable resources, such as oil, coal and natural gas.
What’s more, they are a significant source of pollution. The stuff last decades. Some 95% of all plastic produced since the material was introduced in the 1930s is still in existence, much of it buried in landfill sites. Plastic bags have even been found littering relatively untouched Himalayan mountains.
Bioplastics have been available for some time. But they have not been widely used, because they cost between two-ten times as much. Conventional economics takes no account of such ‘externalities’ as disposal costs.
If Plantic’s products live up to the hype, a sane society would ensure that the use of bioplastics of this type are widely and rapidly generalised. But they won’t be. Plantic has a patent.
So on the one hand, an innovation developed under the free market offers the possibility of solving a major environmental headache. And on the other, free market mechanisms mean that this just won’t happen.
Comments (1)
My local Co-Op uses bags made of biodegradable plastic - which doesn't prevent them from handing them out in large numbers. Perhaps this is a national policy?
We have talked on this blog before about demands for laws that can be enacted now on the environment with some immediate effect. How about banning bags made of non-biodgradable plastics?
There was an article in the Guardian a while back that suggested even biodegradables caused problems in landfill sites but they must be the lesser evil as they do actually disappear eventually.