Friday, September 18, 2009

Miss America the New Face of Bioplastic Bottles

clipped from earth911.com

The Miss America Organization is partnering with Nature’s Bottles™ to promote the benefits of plastic bottles made from polylactic acid (PLA), which is generated using corn instead of petroleum.

Miss America will be the international “Go Green” spokesperson for Nature’s Bottles under the campaign slogan “Green is Gorgeous.”

Photo: Nature

The bottles are manufactured as a bioplastic, which creates a different resin than the polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) typically used to produce petroleum-based water bottles.

This means they cannot be recycled with other PETE bottles, but PLA bottles are biodegradable and can be industrially composted.

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1 comment:

Max @ENSO said...

Burning petroleum products in our cars, airplanes, trains, and for the creation of electricity is a bigger waste of our dwindling petroleum resources than using it to manufacture things like plastic. I agree that plastic is a problem but which of the two uses is causing more pollution?
Making plastic from plants such as corn may sound like a good solution but there are unintended consequences from using corn to make plastic or ethanol fuel. The corn being used for fuel and plastic is not food grade corn it is a genetically modified corn that may be cross pollinating to other food grade crops. When we use land to produce corn for ethanol or PLA plastic we are using land that should be used to produce food grains. The result is higher food prices and countries that rely on importing our grains have started clear burning their forests to have land for growing corn. We are losing our rain forests at an alarming rate….will it be ethanol/PLA plastics or the air we breathe? The increase in corn for fuel/plastic has increased the amount of pesticides used….a problem for our water sheds and drinking water.
The biggest problem with PLA plastic is that it isn’t biodegradable. For proper disposal it must be processed by a commercial composting facility….try finding one of those nearby. Most PLA will end up in a landfill where it will languish right along with standard plastics.
Max
http://www.ensobottles.com