The life expectancy of plastic products that are manufactured with at least a one percent (1%) load, by weight, of our ECM MasterBatch Pellets can be explained through two types of life expectancies. The first type of life expectancy is the life expectancy of the plastic when it is on the warehouse or store shelf, in regular usage as packaging or other normal plastic usage. The second type of life expectancy has to do with the situation when the same plastic has been put in conditions wherein it has constant contact with other materials that are biodegrading. |
independent laboratories by independent scientists.We have had the various test data analyzed by independent scientists and their conclusions and some of the data have been sent to you in the presentation package and are what we base our certification on. The basic concept is that biodegradation is a natural process that occurs around the world but at various speeds due to various conditions. Plastics with our additives behave like sticks, branches or trunks of trees. Due to this fact, we do not guarantee any particular time because the time depends on the same factors that the biodegradation of woods and most other organic materials on earth depend - ambient biota and other environmental conditions. Under specific composting conditions with additional accelerants sprayed on them, some customers have reported biodegradation in as little as a couple of months. Under the more usual, commercial composting conditions using high heat processes, a time frame of some period greater than a year is a reasonable expectation. Petrochemical plastics would normally take hundreds or thousands of years or even longer to “biodegrade”; with our additives, these same plastic formulas biodegrade in a hundredth of that time or less. Do not be confused by the claims of some companies that say that their resins fully biodegrade in 2 months or 3 months. They are speaking of biodegradation under very specific conditions. This has lead to some confusion when the plastic products are in the end-consumers’ hands, such as in the Kassel project in Germany when the bags and other plastic products marked with a “compostable” label were found not to be compostable by the town’s citizens in their backyard compost heaps (they were only “compostable” under the very specific commercial composting standards where there is high heat, oxygenation, moisture control and high levels of microorganisms).When I spoke at the Biodegradable Plastics Conference in Frankfurt, Germany a few years ago, I argued with the companies involved in that project that they should be careful in not trying to confiscate generic terms for too specific conditions (i.e. they should label items as “Commercially Compostable” rather than simply “Compostable” when such conditions are required). As the use of our technology continues to grow to become the world’s leading technology for the production of biodegradable plastics, our viewpoint will continue to gain more and more adherents. Plastics manufactured with our additives will fully biodegrade in home compost heaps, commercial composting operations (both high heat and low heat, or even in vermiculture, processes), buried in the ground, buried in landfills, tilled into the soil, having been littered, etc. Most importantly, our process is by far the least expensive, most widely applicable, proven technology for the biodegradation of plastics in the world. Again, we certify the biodegradation of polyolefins (any of the polyethylenes and polypropylenes), EVAs, PVCs, PETs, PSs, PUs and any combination of these resins, manufactured with at least a 1% load of our additives.We base this certification on more than ten years of testing worldwide by us, by universities, by customers, by prospects and by competitors. |