Providing Management Consulting
and Internet Services
Under Florida Corporation
Comad Property Management LLC

Email: George Makrauer, President
Web: www.comad.com

Internet and Traditional
Management Consulting.
Founded 1972 in Ohio
as Comad Corporation.

1327 Beasley Terrace
Lady Lake, Florida 32162
Phone 352-753-9289
Fax 352-753-9648

Manufacturers and retailers who wrap their products in a biodegradable green flag are beginning to run up against protests from environmentalists and government regulators who question the validity of their claims.

In recent months environmental advertising has become as ubiquitous as health-related claims during the 1980s or the words "New and Improved" in an earlier era. It is "a bit like a tidal wave of hype," said Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III.

Humphrey is part of a task force of attorneys general from eight states that yesterday began hearings aimed at setting common ground rules for manufacturers to follow before making such claims.

The issue has also attracted the attention of the Federal Trade Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, both of which sent representatives to the hearings.

Just as the regulators were focusing on the subject, so too was the environmental group Greenpeace, which yesterday held a news conference in Washington to challenge the whole notion of biodegradable plastics.

Although these products break down into smaller bits of plastic, so far there is no evidence that the plastic biodegrades in the same way that plant and animal products decompose, according to a study for Greenpeace by the Center for Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College, City University of New York.

Greenpeace joined other environmental groups that have denounced the new "biodegradable" plastics as a hoax designed to market garbage bags, disposable diapers and magazine wrappers by playing on consumer fears about the environment.

"As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a single product on the market that has the right to call itself biodegradable," said Greenpeace's Barry Commoner, offering as examples such products as Hefty Degradable Trash Bags and Envirogard Tall Kitchen Can Bags.

The Greenpeace study by Commoner, Anita Glazer Sadun and Thomas F. Webster looked at plastic products that have been induced to break down more easily either by additives that make them lose their flexibility in sunlight or by the addition of cornstarch to the finished products.

Both those techniques cause plastics to break into smaller pieces more easily, but they do not break down into small enough particles to biodegrade, said Commoner.

The volume of plastics is not reduced by the fragmentation of the product, he said.

In addition, the study questioned whether the smaller bits of plastic might more easily be reduced into toxics that could be damaging to soil and water.

Coming to the industry's defense is the already established Degradable Plastics Council, whose chairman, George Makrauer , considers the charges unfair.

"Plastics can easily be made to degrade quickly and safely under many different conditions," he said. He also said that plastics manufacturers should not be attacked for trying to address environmental concerns.

Richard Burket, vice president of the Archer Daniels Midland Co., a leading producer of cornstarch additives, said the company's tests on the products have not been underway long enough to demonstrate the final result of the decomposition process.

"You can't go from a strong material to nothing overnight. It takes awhile," he said.

But the company's studies show that the products break down in a way that will result in a complete biodegradable decomposition, he said.

"Every study shows that is what's going to happen," he said.

"I think the current type of biodegradable plastics can be considered a hoax, but I think the concept is quite valid," said Jan Beyea, senior scientist for the National Audubon Society.

Audubon Magazine has replaced its brown paper wrappers with plastic wrappers and has been experimenting with different types of products that claim to degrade easily, Beyea said.

"First we decided that the plastic polyethylene was less polluting on a life-cycle basis than paper. There's a tremendous amount of pollution associated with paper," from production to disposal, said Beyea.

Paper not only takes up more space in landfills than plastics, it barely decomposes under standard landfill conditions.

Beyea said some of the products the magazine tested failed to live up to the manufacturers' claims for them.

When it comes to deciding what to use, even the environmental groups admit the choice is tough.

For its part, Greenpeace advises that consumers avoid both paper and plastic. Instead, the group encourages people to put their groceries in a reusable cloth bag and their garbage in a can.

One disposable product versus the other is not the issue, said Commoner. "These people say this is good for the landfill. It is not," he said. "Neither is paper. Neither is the landfill."

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