Superheroes of Plastics — Committing to solutions, knowing there are none.
Developing Compostables — the TIPA of an iceberg
Recently, Civil Eats** posted an article, “Plastic To-Go Containers Are Bad, but Are the Alternatives Any Better?” (by Gosia Wozniacka).
Wozniacka’s article takes a comprehensive look at compostable plastics, their viability, scalability, costs to consumers and life-cycle costs to the environment.
As with most of today’s plastic waste mitigations, compostables is an imperfect solution. Though some compostables might be 30% bio-plastic, derived from plant-based polymers such as corn starch, they most likely still contain petroleum-based polymers.
“Our products are up to two-thirds bio-sourced,” one innovative product representative told me. Rebecca Najjar-Rudick is spokesperson for TIPA®, a start-up plastic packaging company targeting the strong demand, particularly in Europe, for compostable plastic. “Our R&D department is always looking to source a higher percentage of high-performing compostable bio-based polymers as they become available.”
Developed in Israel, TIPA® speaks to the zeitgeist of a nation where, according to Wozniacka’s piece, images of a frowning Greta Thunberg hover over the single-use plastic foodware that restaurants feel compelled to offer their guests. Thunberg’s scowl can apparently guilt customers into options like bring-your-own utensils.
Compostables solve two big problems in the consumption-to-waste chain. They can be disposed of without adding to landfills, and they decompose into materials harmless to the environment. In theory.
Najjar-Rudick broke it down for her product: “TIPA®’s packaging decomposes into compost, and what remains is CO2 (90%), H20 (water), and Biomass (less than 10%).“ Those who hear “compost” and picture feeding a garden, might find the small portion of biomass surprising. That’s just one of the tradeoffs in the multilateral deal of producing, using, and disposing of plastic.
However much developers want to improve the product in its waste stages, they still have to meet the needs of the product’s actual use. Both Wozniacka’s article and TIPA®’s story illustrate the fact that finding this balance for compostable plastic is a solution in its early stages.
“On the one hand,” says Najjar-Rudick, “we wanted the properties of flexible packaging to be exactly the same as conventional plastic — high durability, flexible, transparent, printable, sealable, and waterproof. And on the other hand we wanted the package to decompose within a short period of time, while protecting each client’s unique product.”
Why plastic in the first place?
Plastic is so ubiquitous, we hardly think about what a versatile and recombinant invention it is.
Food packaging, in particular, has to maintain these features over a pretty wide range of temperatures, according to Dr. Margaret (Meg) Sobkowicz, a polymer scientist exploring green packaging solutions at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
“We want to be able to freeze it,” Sobkowicz told me, “and for safety we should have that plastic able to be heated up to 100 [degrees]. All plastic is permeable to water and air — so we want to be sure there is some intrinsic barrier for the plastic.”
Sobkowicz explained why bio-plastics struggle to replace petroleum on the production end: “Most of the time it’s more expensive than petroleum — raw materials are cheap, oil is cheap. And we have 100 years of developing products — plastics, films, adhesives — from petroleum.”
Most compostables, in working on the plastic waste problem make their environmental sacrifices in plastic production.
“Currently, in order to create packaging with the complex qualities of high-performing flexible plastic packaging,” says Najjar-Rudick, “our products are made partially from fossil-fuel based polymers, because they are the only polymers on the market that address certain properties for high-end food packaging.”
TIPA®’s packaging with the 30% organic polymers is made from non-GMO corn.
Many companies are experimenting with organic polymers.* The R & D in quest of new polymers (or combinations of polymers) can’t help but be expensive. And yet companies and universities are announcing the development of new candidates all the time. Cornell announced a promising one in April 2020 that degrades by ultraviolet radiation.
No doubt the challenges of producing TIPA® at a competitive price point led its developer, Daphna Nissenbaum, to target small niche markets within food and fashion where compostable packaging might add value to the brand. In the food market, TIPA® can be found in Waitrose stores, which offer plastic-saving, bring-your-own-container product displays throughout the shopping experience. Plastic-conscious shoppers can find refill bins, loose fruit, and “a borrow-a-box-scheme.”
With fashion, TIPA® also found a perfect match in Stella McCartney, a fashion designer obsessed with sourcing materials that are both environmentally-friendly and animal-rights-conscious. In a fascinating Wired piece, “Stella McCartney is on a quest…” author Oliver Franklin-Wallis points out that the fashion industry is one of the least eco-friendly.
More to the point, McCartney’s “quest” to buck that system and ferret out sustainable, animal-friendly fabric solutions, much like the plastic-free town, illustrates today’s green options are all over the map.
Looking over some of McCartney’s innovative solutions, Franklin-Wallis concludes, “Bioengineered spider silk. Mushroom leather. Recycled ocean plastics. Stella McCartney is designing … the future of sustainable companies.”
McCartney’s story underscores the heroic lengths we’ll probably have to go to before establishing a successful, systemic eco-friendly future. The challenges go beyond innovating new chemical compounds — the chemical giant BASF comes out with new plastic-replacement polymers every year. But from production infrastructure to supply chains to cultural norms, there is no clear, unbroken distribution flow.
Stella McCartney is a one-off. And because there’s no system in place for what McCartney wants to do, her solutions form a hodgepodge of small experiments, her own playlist of sorts — and TIPA® compostable packaging is one song on her playlist. Her solutions are not scalable to the level of a town or a global corporation. But fortunately for Stella McCartney (and TIPA®), singularity commands high value in the fashion world.
Example 2: The Plastic Free Town
There’s something about people coming together to solve a problem as a large, single-issue group that can really move the needle for both research and public awareness. Simon Usborne’s compelling Guardian story about “Britain’s first plastic-free town,” Penzance, reported on the town’s citizens and shop owners who joined in a pledge to avoid single-use plastic. Keeping the pledge amounted to a group experiment, testing the effectiveness of plastic alternatives. In discovering the difficulties of “having it all” the town also provided a social experiment on how to prioritize solutions. One shop offering a combination of solutions featured corn-starch-based packaging that was edible. At the same time, the shop-owner saw her packaging costs triple, “some of which inevitably trickled down to customers.”
The plastic free town is a valiant effort, and looking at the failure to be truly plastic free misses the point that these “citizen scientists” are contributing to the field of knowledge that will build ultimate solutions. Environmental purists may view such high-end plastic alternatives as gimmicks of privilege or greenwashing. And “environmental news” stories seem to relish in presenting plastic-free cities as falling short of the mark. But in terms of solving the plastic problem, it might be more useful to view the McCartney fashion line as an innovation hub and the plastic-free town as an incubator.
Heroes, Silver Bullets, and Dreamers
The looming hint of “greenwashing” stems from the natural human fear of being fooled. “Gotcha” stories about green solutions start out with hope and end up with “debunking.”
Maybe the real problem is our natural fondness for silver bullets. We like them as much as we like heroes. But what if the reality is, it’s too soon to expect compostability with a pedigree life cycle and without petroleum?
For example, TIPA® packaging meets high European standards for compostable, including a time limit for decomposition. But you (or someone less responsible) can’t just drop your TIPA® packaging on the ground and have it melt harmlessly away. You can’t even mix it into your garden compost heap and have it make juicy tomatoes. The decomposing package can still contain toxins — which, to be fair, may be substances that leach into the packaging, such as ink, added to achieve sales or supply chain goals.
Packaging rated OK for industrial composting must be taken to an industrial composter, where, among many requisites, the composting process requires continuous heat held to specific parameters that you probably can’t replicate at home. Even packaging certified for “home composting,” a separate rating from “industrial composting,” requires a quality home composter and can’t be simply discarded into a compost heap.
In Europe, industrial composters are more of a thing, but many Americans will not be able to find suitable industrial composting anywhere nearby. According to Biodegradable Products Institute, there are fewer than 100 composting facilities in the US designed for “actively taking postconsumer food scraps mixed with food-soiled paper and compostable packaging.”
Not only that, industrial composting can come with a large CO2 expenditure, leading to a potentially high carbon footprint for disposal. And bioplastics feedstocks derived from sugar, corn, or other plants, currently get mixed reviews on their “life cycle” carbon footprint. A 2019 Fast Company piece by Adele Peters takes a close look at the realities of composting.
As McCartney and the retailers of Penzance have learned, when you commit to solving a systemic problem, you basically sign on to follow the Mad Hatter of innovation down a rabbit hole. In the case of reduction, recycling or replacement of plastic, the rabbit hole tunnels into a world of myriad plastics and complex chemistries. So already the “best solution” isn’t obvious, not without setting up priorities, a scoring system, and a lot of math. The need to clarify and weigh priorities is something Dr. Sobkowicz recommended and something many research groups struggle with.
In the future, I’ll look at some of the developments on the horizon, with a brief look at how prioritizing the challenges might work.
* — [I’m currently researching developments in alternative polymers for a future piece.]
** — [In a Shameless plug, here’s a link to my completely unrelated piece for Civil Eats magazine]
