Environment

Finding the right chemistry

(photo via TreeHugger)

One of the top stories on WorldChanging this week gives credit to scientists as being leaders in the movement to “save the world.” The story focuses on “sustainable chemistry,” or the development of green materials, like chicken feather and soy composite circuit boards, or plastic made of carbon dioxide and orange peels.

The article specifically points out China as a manufacturer of “spudware,” or starch-based tableware. (SpudWare is also a successful line of cutlery created by Excellent Packaging & Supply, a wholesale distribution company founded by Steven Levine.) Disposable tableware made of plastic or Styrofoam can pose serious health risks, including cancer and digestive problems. The Chinese government officially banned Styrofoam in 1999, but the production and consumption of it still thrives–up to 70 percent of China’s estimated 12 billion disposable snack boxes are made of the spongy white material, according to China Daily.

(Photo via China Digital Times)

And that’s where the chemists come into play. A group of researchers from Nanjing Normal University and Nanjing University have developed a new material that has super-absorbent capabilities and also utilizes Styrofoam waste. (If you want to get technical, read the study, “Waste polystyrene foam-graft-acrylic acid/montmorillonite superabsorbent nanocomposite,”published in the February 27, 2007 online edition of Journal of Applied Polymer Science.)

(Photo via Nanowerk)

The research aims to help eliminate the problem of “white pollution,” so called because of the blankets of non-degradable trash that litter China’s landscape, especially in small towns, which suffer from inadequate municipal solid waste disposal. China throws away more than 2 billion plastic bags every day and consumes about 6.5 billion pieces of disposable tableware annually, the China Daily reports.

Alternative packaging has been tested, but with little lasting success. Last year, Li Peisheng, deputy director of Beijing Recycling Economy Research Institute, investigated the status of disposable tableware market, and he found that the makers of eco-friendly substitutes, made from paperboard, rice husk, straw and starch, were struggling to compete.

“Finding Solutions to ‘White Pollution’“
China Daily
By Chen Zhiyong
January 21, 2006

In Guangdong Province, 16 enterprises are producing eco-friendly tableware in 2000, but four years later, only five remained and the rest closed down owing to financial plight.

In 2002, the total sales number of eco-friendly tableware in the whole country was two-fifths that of Styrofoam’s.
Generally it has been discovered that consumers and suppliers are reluctant to pay for biodegradable containers that cost several times more. [The cost of biodegradable plastics is about 70 to 80 per cent higher than ordinary plastic, according to Shanghai Star.] Also, their mechanical properties, sanitary quality and temperature preservation ability are inferior to Styrofoam ones.

But most importantly, the biodegradable label may also be sending a misleading message. The products bearing the label are, in fact, just partially degradable within years, according to Tang Saizhen, senior engineer of China Light Industry Information Center and also a degradable plastics expert.

Some of these “new” products actually contain more water or oil- resistant substances, the latter of which are not easily degradable under natural conditions. Starch-type packaging, especially, will not rot away when packed into the garbage pile, because it only degrades in the sunshine.

“So if discarded everywhere, the so-called biodegradable tableware can also cause white pollution,” said Tang.

Therefore, a combination of old habits, consumer preferences, high costs, manufacturing inefficiencies and misinformation is threatening to continue–or worsen–China’s solid waste problem.

In the meantime, we can hope that innovative thinkers, like the research team in Nanjing, can find the right chemistry to create sustainable solutions to end white pollution.

If you’re interested in learning more about “spudware” in China, here are a few starch cutlery manufacturers in Mainland China, according to Alibaba http://www.alibaba.com:

Huayan Eco-Friendly Material Co., Ltd.
Kao-yu International Co., Ltd

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