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Starch-based bioplastic may be as toxic as petroleum-based plastic, study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
Imagine that, plastics are dangerous
this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Ok so what do we want? Toxic plastics that last forever or toxic plastics that break down in the environment after 3-5 years?
Because that is the gambit here. We're not going going to just get rid of plastics altogether.
Also, this article is setting off my BS meter by claiming plastics contain 16,000 toxic substances but not showing how much of that is realistically possible to get into your body. The dose makes the poison!
"This spider contains 1300 toxic substances—one of which will kill you if even a tiny droplet gets in your blood! And these spiders are out in the environment!"
Less plastic is what I want. The world is addicted and we need safe alternatives. Reduce and reuse come before recycle for a reason.
Plastic is useful in a lot of applications, but does it really need to be in everything from our clothes to our shopping bags to our bodies?
Unfortunately, most bioplastics are more like 300 years, which yes, is significantly better than 300 thousand years, and with industrial compost heaters you can push those 300 years down. But I've also had to come to terms that my failed 3D prints will likely outlive me (although I do collect the waste to hopefully recycle someday). I don't print that much compared to most in the hobby, but it is something I consider before I print things.
That said, I'm not going to let perfect be the enemy of good, and the biodegradability of bioplastics is still exponentially better than petroleum plastic.
I smell petroleum company money.
Hm, depends how 'breaking down' is defined. Because it usually doesn't mean there's no toxic substance left. Instead, plastic degradation often IS the formation of micro or nano plastics. In this case, it's irrelevant how long this process takes without knowing how long it takes until there's no toxicity left.
Also, if something is described as 'biodegradable', I wouldn't blame a consumer for composting it. And if it actually poisons the compost, that's net harm. So, it'd be actively harmful green washing.
It is crucially relevant how long decay takes. That's why there's microplastics in your food and your body. Because plastic does not degrade for hundreds of years. Fucking Obviously, that is the single most important aspect of it.
I think “no plastics” is actually what we want
Or maybe qualify that as "minimal plastics".
Are there any good alternatives though?
wood/paper, glass, metal.
For some use-cases, sure. But so many products today are only affordable (or even possible) because of plastic.
How would you make an affordable computer, for example, without plastic?
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Don't forget hemp
And bamboo.
AFAIK the claim was never that bioplastic are "healthy", the claim is that it breaks down way faster. Preventing a buildup as we have seen with mikroplastic.
Sensationalist headline IMO.
It doesn't breakdown as fast as claimed, either. PLA needs high temperature composting to breakdown.
It's not impossible to do, but nobody bothers. It's one of the more sustainable options for 3d printing, so we should get on that.
I actually see it as weirdly counterproductive. When bioplastics degrade they release their carbon into the air as carbon dioxide. Whereas a properly landfilled piece of plastic takes its carbon permanently out of circulation, it's literally sequestered.
Landfills get a bad rap. When they're done right they're a clean and reliable way to deal with waste. They're just easy to get wrong if you don't care, and they look so unphotogenic it's easy to campaign against them. But one of my favourite parks is a former landfill done right, aside from the occasional monitoring well scattered around the place there's no way to tell what it used to be.
It's only releasing CO2 that was already there. We're not digging the carbon out of the ground after it was sequestered millions of years ago. PLA is currently mostly from corn, though there are other crops that can work. There's even a hemp-based path, though I don't know how viable it is.
PLA is one of the most recyclable plastics. Grind it up and you can melt it back into 3d printer filament. The machines for this have been improving a lot. The bad news is that you have to make sure you only put PLA stuff into the grinder. This makes it hard to do at makerspaces where you can't trust people to separate PLA prints from others. I am hoping that my own makerspace gets a machine, and then you can at least handle your own prints that way.
CO2 is CO2, it doesn't matter where the carbon came from. If you're sequestering plastics that were made from plants then you're taking it out of the atmosphere for a net benefit.
It was never intended as a carbon sequestration method, and it would make a very poor one. Considering the energy input in creating it, as well, it's likely CO2 positive over its lifespan. We would be better off not making it at all if that's the main consideration.
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Don’t the still break down to microplastics since they are so resistant to being broken down?
IDK how fast they break down, they are supposed to break down faster. But apparently not as fast as to makers claim.
That's always been a garbage claim, "in an industrial composter" where heat and moisture are super high. At very least moisture and UV light are needed, probably not going to happen in a landfill. But then nothing else in there is gonna decay either. If you dig up landfills from the 70s and 80s, you can still read the newspaper articles layered in with everything else. Imagine the wrappers for candy you threw away as a kid. They still exist.
The catch is those landfills do get quite warm under the pile so if they didn’t need UV light it might work.
The reason why paper keeps so well is it needs oxygen to break down and it has a butt load of methane covering it under the pile
Was the study funded by Big Oil?
. . . Just. Curious.
I tried to access the study but can't find it at the usual mirrors (yet). They usually just have a line like 'the study authors and funding partners do not have any conflict of interest in this area of study' so it requires a journalist or some expert to dig into the funding sources. AFAIK.
“Starch based” plastic is just a way to greenwash PLA.
Just because the C, H, and O originally came from starch, does not automatically make the chemically synthesized product safe.
The point of these plastics isn’t greenwashing, the point is to biodegrade. Petroleum plastics don’t break down in compost or a landfill.
It does mean no petroleum was used to make the plastic, which is one environmentally-friendly aspect.
That's incorrect, making things from crops that use farms which could be wildlife habitat and use oil based fertilizers and pesticides isn't necessarily better or emit less net co2. It may in some cases be better but just like corn based ethanol it can also increase food shortages and depending on where it's grown be worse than just using oil.
oil from the ground is a limited resource, farmland is relatively plentiful (more importantly governments want enough to feed more than their own people domestically even if the people won't ever want that much corn in their diet).
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Me looking at my shiny new 3D printer after all this stuff:
Yup, this is why my printer is in an enclosure and always vents to outside no matter the filament I'm using.
Even though I kinda like the sweet smell of melted PLA. :(
It's a Prusa MK4, so I'll get it upgraded to the Core One to get it enclosed, and construct a vent.
Based on what I'm reading, the glass transition isn't the issue, it's the plastic itself. PLA is brittle, and taking supports off creates an incredible mess. I also use ASA, and while it seems to be less brittle, there's still quite a mess. (Thankfully, ASA doesn't breakdown to release the styrene until it hits 400C, and the extrusion temp is 260C. That means the accumulation of the microplastic doesn't include the carcinogenic aspect, just the ones listed and suspected of micro plastics in general).
I used to use an SLA printer since I like making minis, but the resin started irritating the shit out of me, was insanely difficult to clean, and apparently the UV reactant is carcinogenic. I stopped using that entirely 4+ years ago (maybe used it for 6 months irregularly). I want another, but not without a much better workspace and proper ventilation. Except it, as well, results in a resin copolymer that I would find extremely likely to cause the same micro plastic hazard.
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