A New Kind of Plastic We Can All Agree On

Everyone is sadly familiar with the blight of pollution caused by plastic. Valuable for multiple uses –  from keeping food fresh to containing beverages to carrying purchases home from the store – single-use, non-degradable plastic is choking our planet.

According to the United Nations Environment Program, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute around the world and as many as five trillion plastic bags are used each year. The world’s population produces 440 million tons of plastic waste each year – a figure greater than the weight of the entire human population.

The problem is escalating. By the early 2000s, the amount of plastic waste created rose more in one decade than it had in the previous four.

Recycling, though a noble goal, has barely made a dent in the problem. A Greenpeace report released last month called plastic recycling a “dead-end street” and found that the U.S. plastic recycling rate is less than 5 percent, down by half since 2014. When plastic finds its way into the ocean, it destroys beaches and fishing grounds and gathers into massive floating “garbage patches” millions of square miles in size. The problem: plastic doesn’t break down. Instead, it breaks up into smaller pieces called microplastics that are almost impossible to dispose of and are small enough to enter our bodies.

To make the problem worse, 98 percent of single-use plastic is made from fossil fuel, meaning that plastic doesn’t just pollute, it contributes to climate change.

Thankfully, there is a solution: Instead of making non-degradable products from fossil fuel that last forever, we can make degradable products from plants and other materials that can be effectively composted or that will degrade on their own. These products are a critical part of what must be a multi-part solution to reducing the harm of non-degradable plastic in the environment.

PHA, short for polyhydroxyalkanoate, is a polyester produced in nature. It is a foundational technology for producing biodegradable products. Several companies working with PHA have formed the PHA Coalition to advocate for the policy changes necessary to speed rollout of these climate-saving products. Coalition members include PepsiCo, CJ Group, Beyond Plastic, Cove, and others.

PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division has introduced industrially compostable bags for its Off the Eaten Path brand vegetable snacks. The materials used for the snack bags are made from non-food, plant-based sources; producing them creates 60 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional packaging.

Cove, a California materials company, is making the first entirely biodegradable water bottle using PHA. Cove’s PHA is being supplied by RWDC Industries, a global company using PHA to create degradable coffee cups, utensils, straws and other bulk-use products typically made of non-degradable plastic.

Our own company, CJ BIO, is producing PHACT, a bioplastic that is completely degradable in fresh or salt water and soil. PHACT is produced through a bioengineering process that involves the fermentation of sugar. It can be composted at industrial scale or in a consumer’s back yard. It can be used to make everything from lipstick cases to golf tees to pens to food packaging, taking the place of non-biodegradable plastic.

This year, CJ BIO and NatureWorks, an advanced materials company, agreed to combine their technologies to produce products that have the strength and durability of plastic made from fossil fuel with none of the pollution and climate-change downside.

The technology is here; the products are being manufactured and used by consumers around the world. As manufacturing steps up, costs will come down, making bioplastic products competitive with their non-degradable counterparts. Now, government must step up and match the private sector’s commitment to reducing non-degradable plastic.

This can be accomplished in several ways, first with the build-out of an effective composting infrastructure at scale to prevent repeating the well-meaning but short-sighted mistakes of early recycling efforts. Jurisdictions set goals for recycling their waste stream that were neither supported by the market nor by the nascent recycling infrastructure. As a result, recyclable materials were, and still are, sent to landfills and incinerators. A comprehensive and broad-based set of policies and regulations that would establish and fund industrial composting facilities around the country would contribute much to the rapid uptake of PHA and other bioplastics.

In order to help win over a naturally skeptical public, many of whom feel burned by bio-based materials that don’t live up to daily use and needs, industry wants comprehensive and sensible legislation and standards for real-life biodegradation of actual articles, such as grocery bags, utensils, and food containers. This would give manufacturers the guidelines and standards they want and the public the seal of approval they need.

The continued and escalating use of non-degradable plastic is unsustainable for the planet. Thankfully, science and industry have created a mighty weapon to solve the problem – PHA and other biobased materials. Now it’s time for policymakers to join the fight.

Max Senechal is Chief Commercial Officer of CJ Biomaterials, a part of CJ CheilJedang, a food and bioengineering subsidiary of South Korea-based CJ Group.