Solving the hurdle of plastics in product design

Recalling the eco sustainable design course from the university was painful each time I was visiting the second hand vintage shop near the campus, where furniture from the past decades felt close to ending its life into the landfill, just delaying is destiny of polluting the environment with PVC, glue, fiberglass resin.

When it was my turn to use plastic, I thought recycling was the answer, because I was naive.

The share of pollution constituted by furniture and products is incredibly lower than the impact of packaging, and that’s where reusable packaging and bio degradable plastics such as PLA are gaining momentum.

My pain though comes from the products I use and work with (toys, gifts, electronic devices, home appliances), because they are like my companions through life, I can feel attached to them. But, until now, biodegradable plastic didn’t show the performance of classic ABS, PET, PP, and so these plastic friends were the tangible image of pollution, I was seeing them already dissolving into the environment. Packaging and fast-fashion do way more damage, but I was aware just of them.

Bio-compatible plastic could be the solution to pollution, plastic is already a a carbon based material, coming from organic sources, fossil trees, commonly called oil, and in fact it can already be absorbed by the eco systems, just takes too many years.

I’m avoiding to focus on the toxic compounds that often are embedded inside plastic, to add features to the polymers, but for now I will focus on the polymeric chains, which can be returned safely to the food chain, eaten by bacteria and converted to gas and water.

My hopes now come from a manufacturer in Oregon, US, named Biosphere Plastic LLC, which offers what seems to be a great solution, and I’m waiting eagerly to see the test results from a toy company where I pushed to try this compound on 2021.

As they claim:

“Biodegradable plastic enhanced with BioSphere Plastic’s Additive is a unique additive package that when placed into polymers rapidly enhances the ability for plastic to biodegrade in anaerobic and aerobic environments. Plastic when placed into active microbial environments begin to decompose at very slow rates by microorganisms. BioSphere biodegradable plastic additive enhances the ability for the plastic product to decompose by microorganisms. Products that have been treated with the biodegradable plastic additive can see results of biodegradability in landfills, anaerobic digestion systems and aerobic facilities.”

Basically with