BioBags

If you’ve been following the news, you know that plastic bags (including plastic grocery bags, garbage bags and “baggies”) have been implicated in all kinds of environmental problems, from pollution of rivers and streams, oceans and reservoirs that supply drinking water, to strangulation and suffocation of animals that get caught in the bags. The Sierra Club has designated bags as “the single most deadly item at the grocery store.” One solution is BioBags, a certified 100 percent biodegradable, compostable bag made from non-GMO corn, fashioned into a material called Mater-Bi. The city of San Francisco is leading the movement to ban plastic bags, and has endorsed BioBags as environmentally friendly alternatives. BioBags use soy-based inks and dyes; use no chemical additives to enhance decomposition; and biodegrade naturally in soil. If placed in a landfill, the bags decompose at the same rate as paper, leaves and food waste (much quicker than the 1,000 years it takes one plastic bag to break down). And, if BioBags make it into water supplies, they decompose in eight to 14 months. Now that’s an environmental solution.