Oh no! We'll need to find a new global pollutant!
Beer and soft drinks could soon be sipped from “all-plant” bottles under new plans to turn sustainably grown crops into plastic in partnership with major beverage makers.
[Avantium] biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.
[.]
“This plastic has very attractive sustainability credentials because it uses no fossil fuels, and can be recycled – but would also degrade in nature much faster than normal plastics do,” says [Avantium’s chief executive, Tom van Aken].
Avantium’s plant plastic is designed to be resilient enough to contain carbonate drinks. Trials have shown that the plant plastic would decompose in one year using a composter, and a few years longer if left in normal outdoor conditions. But ideally, it should be recycled, said Van Aken.
From "kickstart 'hopes to'" to "finished, completed successful product" is a long, long road.
If the new degradable bottles are successful, will that mean an end to all the ugly park benches made from recycled plastic? Awwwww,
that's a shame.
