Degradable Trash Bag FAQ

Degradable Trash Bags

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Why are other plastic bags damaging to our planet?

Plastic trash bags are traditionally made from polyethylene which depending on their thickness is either high density, low density, or linear low-density. All are petroleum based including most reusable grocery shopping bags.Petroleum based Plastic bags can take up to 1000 years to decompose in a land fill and animals often mistake them for food resulting in suffocation and starvation.

How about trash bags made from starch?

A new technology uses corn starch which is made from plants. While environmentally friendly in one respect, the additional demand for corn effects the pricing of food, increases carbon emissions, and erodes soil 12 times faster than it can be re-formed.

While an improvement over the traditional plastic bag, corn starch bags cause environmental problems by emitting climate changing gases in the land fills.

Recycling the corn starch PLA treated bags contaminates other recycled material. As a result these bags should be in a separate composting facility which is very difficult to orchestrate.

How are Truegreen's Trash Bags different?

We use a Patented Process that speeds up the biodegrading process:

Step one accelerates the plastic degradation process by several orders of magnitude whereby the long polymer molecules are reduced to shorter lengths and undergo oxidation (oxygen groups attach themselves to the polymer molecules). This process is triggered by heat (elevated temperatures found in landfills or composting), UV light (a component of sun light), and mechanical stress (e.g. wind or compaction in a landfill). Oxidation causes the molecules to become hydrophilic (water-attracting) and small enough to be ingested by micro-organisms, setting the stage for biodegradation to begin.

In step two, biodegradation occurs in the presence of moisture and micro-organisms typically found in the environment. The plastic material is completely broken down into the residual products of the biodegradation process. As micro-organisms consume the degraded plastics, carbon dioxide, water, and biomass are produced and returned to nature by way of the biocycle.