Can Bamboo Replace Paper And Plastic? And Should It? | World Wide Waste | Business Insider

demand for bamboo is growing whether it's straws spoons or even toilet paper bamboo products are springing up on grocery shelves everywhere usually branded as a Greener alternative to plastic and paper some species of the fast growing plant can Sprout more than one foot per day but our bamboo products really good for the planet and how do they stack up against the paper and plastic competition over the centuries people have used bamboo to build houses make paper and even cook into food today it's still often used as Scaffolding in places like Hong Kong using it to make disposable items like cups and toilet paper is a much newer concept and it's on the rise bamboo forests in China the world's top supplier have more than tripled in size since 1950 and the US and India are twoo of the top buyers bamboo thrives on the island of Taiwan too in forests like this one it's one of the only food contact safe approved bamboo plantations in Taiwan that's where Taiwanese company called lastic gets its bamboo after sawing down each stock harv Harvesters slice off the small branches and leaves those stalks will later become food wear like straws and lunchboxes the founder used to work as an importer of packaged foods and felt he was adding to the world's plastic problems at the production site the team slices open a bundle most of the workers here are part of a different oper ation that makes bamboo skewers for food plastic partners with them to use some of their leftover scraps inside a worker cuts the stocks into segments removing these tough joints called nodes the smaller chunks travel through this device which Cuts them in half and sorts them by size the team soaps bundles of these segments in water for a couple hours a worker feeds the softened pieces into a machine that cuts out the skewer shape plastic uses these leftover strands called offcuts some of them will serve as fuel for the next step they're loaded into a bucket with pellets that are also made of bamboo all of it Powers a machine that dries the stringy offcuts and grinds them up next the bagged bamboo powder will be mixed with other ingredients plastic wouldn't show us that part but the recipe includes cornstarch and minerals there's also something the founders call a bioadhesive it's technically a biodegradable plastic and it's made from Plants instead of fossil fuels it helps hold bamboo fibers together and makes them moldable like plastic Goods plastic has about 30 different formulas which can take nearly any shape including straws this machine can make 300 of them a minute the company also makes lunch boxes a sheet of the mixture is warmed up then vacuum pressure sucks it into shape at another facility machines press elastics formula into spoons forks and other color the final products are packaged and ready to be shipped out for now the team wraps the straw bundles in plastic but they're working on an alternative eventually all of our packaging will be this material but we haven't been able to quite Mass produce a bag yet Plastics customers include coffee shops packaging companies and straw makers some buy the finished goods others buy the bamboo mixture and make the goods themselves the idea is that manufacturers can easily switch from plastic to lastic can just use it in the same Machinery just switching some of the temperature settings on the machines and we can make the exact same product for the company says all products made from its material can break down in nature that's a key detail many compostable Plastics only break down at industrial compost facilities under very specific temperature and moisture conditions our product you don't need any special Machinery you can it decompose is a natural environment quite rapidly but don't just take the company's word for it it has seven different certifications backing this up including one of the world's strictest tests for compostability called as581 to hit that standard you have to prove that the product biodegrades in under 180 days in a home compost bin and that it's non-toxic even to worms living in the soil the faster a product breaks down in nature the less time it has to harm or entangle an animal but there's more to environmental impact than biodegradability like energy usage plastic shared a study showing its production emissions aren't that different from regular plastic but said it's just a rough estimate other research looked at more than a 100 different bamboo products and found most of them had lower emissions than similar items made of other materials including plastic that's mainly because the bamboo items took less energy to make one more complication the recipes for bamboo plastic vary widely and sometimes might even be unsafe in 2022 the European Union cracked down on the illegal import of food containers made of bamboo and plastic saying they could leak harmful chemicals in Risky amounts especially when heated the main issue isn't bamboo but mixing it with a type of resin called mamine which lastic does not use still for now the company can't sell products with bamboo and them in Europe meanwhile eating out of regular old plastic containers might have health impacts too there's evidence it can mess with people's hormones and fertility so long as bamboo products are safety tested and truly biodegradable there's a good chance they're a better option than plastic but how do they stack up against paper products unlike trees bamboo can regrow from its Roots after it's cut down without replanting and it can be harvested every few years while pine trees take decades to mature an estimated 2 million trees are cut down and make toilet paper every day a company called real paper sources its bamboo from this forest in Southwest China these stocks are at least 2 years old after the bamboo is cut down the harvesting team sends it through a chipper from here the chips head to a Papermill inside these tanks the chips are heated with a chemical mixture until they're soft and lighter in color the pulp is dried and compressed into sheets at another facility they're turned into giant rolls of paper known as parent rolls machines wind the paper onto small cardboard tubes and slice them into the toilet paper rolls we know and love the process is basically the same for making standard toilet paper except that standard tissue uses the pulp from trees instead of bamboo Major Brands like charman and cottonil have gotten into hot water for sourcing tree pulp from Canada's boreal forest sometimes called the Amazon of the north it's a massive carbon sink and home to threatened species like Caribou these major brands are using Virgin Forest fiber from uh globally important forests for a product we use for a few seconds and flush down the toilet the region is also home to over 600 communities of indigenous people I Cry Sometimes when I go when I when I sit at my house and think about the land how it's going to be destroyed and all the forestries and all the Machinery paper companies typically don't own forest land themselves they get their wood from outside suppliers but toilet paper helps Drive Forest loss regardless of who cuts the trees down so can bamboo help well one report says the best option for toilet tissue isn't bamboo it's recycled paper and no that doesn't mean used toilet paper it's a toilet paper that's made using um paper that you throw in your recycling bin and or that is coming from an office building it has 1/3 the carbon footprint but bamboo is the next best choice it's better than using trees but not quite as good as the 100% recycled stuff that's because bamboo forests are still an important part of local ecosystems if you're shopping for bamboo tissue you can look for a seal from the forest Stewardship Council they do help to ensure that some um basic sustainability standards are met um as opposed to other certification systems that um are not nearly as rigorous but here's the thing there's more than one type of fsse certification look for fsse 100% if you want tissue made entirely from sustainably harvested bamboo ultimately even renewable resources have environmental impacts if sourced and used responsibly bamboo has a lot of Promise however some of these eco-friendly products are relatively expensive at Walmart one roll of real paper costs a $167 compared to about $125 for roll of charman but both elastic Bendy straw and a traditional plastic one costs less than a penny meanwhile research shows many consumers are willing to pay extra for more sustainable options yet the team behind lastic says it might take regulation to truly compete more and more countries are looking into laws that hold polluting companies accountable an approach called extended producer responsibility or epr the idea is to make plastic and paper producers pay for collecting and recycling their products that could lead to higher prices making it easier to compete or to Major Brands switching to more planet friendly materials for [Music]

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,077,423

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, bamboo, plastic, cutlery, reel, toilet paper

Id: B6FVwNiR1XI

Length: 11min 42sec (702 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024