Plastic Bag Info

Below are some information about plastic bags relevant to our topic that I found:

• Polyethylene is an economical plastic so it is commonly used for disposable bags. Plastic bags can be made having various colours, including translucent or even transparent in some cases.
  
• Bags made of HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) are typically translucent, but not fully transparent (i.e. not fully see-through). Bags made out of LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene) can be quite clear, but are still usually not as totally transparent as other plastics.
• HDPE and LDPE bags are manufactured from a waste product of the petroleum industry.
• Durability, strength, low energy intensity and light weight make plastic bags preferred
• Oxo-biodegradable plastic can be safely used for direct contact with food. Unlike PVC, the polymers from which oxo-biodegradable plastics are made do not contain organo-chlorine, nor do they emit methane nor nitrous oxide when they degrade.
• The plastic is consumed by bacteria and fungi after the additive has reduced the molecular structure, and it is therefore biodegradable. This process continues until the material has biodegraded to nothing more than CO2, water, and humus, and the time taken for oxo-biodegradable plastic to degrade can be ‘programmed’ at manufacture to be as little as a few months or as much as a few years. Degradation starts immediately after exposure to air, but products can be vacuum-packed for delivery to suspend degradation until needed for use.
• Organic waste can be put into oxo-biodegradable plastic sacks in homes, restaurants, hospitals, etc. and put straight into the composting plant, so smells, disease transmission by flies, and handling hazards to humans are effectively minimised. The bags do not need to be opened and disposed of separately.
• Oxo-biodegradable plastic is particularly useful for “back-of-store” use in supermarkets, as waste bread and other products wrapped in oxo-biodegradable plastic packaging can be put into oxo-biodegradable sacks and put straight into a composting plant.
• Oxo-biodegradable/compostable bags can be safely assimilated into the green waste stream, and do not need separate collection. The resulting compost is a valuable resource for farmers and growers, and since oxo-biodegradable plastic (unlike the starch-based alternative) releases its carbon slowly, it produces high quality compost.
• Oxo-biodegradable plastic does not degrade quickly in low temperature “windrow” composting, but it is ideal for “in-vessel” composting at the higher temperatures required by new animal by-products regulations.
• It is not of course acceptable to apply conventional plastics to the soil even if they are fragmented, since physical shredding does not transform plastic into a biodegradable product.
• However, the properties of peroxidised and embrittled oxo-biodegradable plastic are quite different from those of the original plastic. The transformed plastic behaves in the same way as nature’s wastes. It is bio-assimilated by the same bacteria and fungi, and they transform the degraded plastic products to cell biomass, like lignocellulosic materials.
• Oxo-biodegradable plastic is designed to fragment by a process which includes both photo-oxidation and thermo-oxidation, so it will work even in the absence of light.

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