Archive for June 11th, 2009
Biodegradable Products? Federal Trade Commission calls the claims into question
Here’s an interesting piece from today’s New York Times.
In a nutshell, the Federal Trade Commission has gone after marketing claims that certain products are biodegradable. The problem, according to the FTC, is that biodegradable products must decompose naturally within a reasonable amount of time after they are disposed of.
But the guidelines talk about “customary disposal.” In most cases, that means sealing garbage up in plastic bags and sending it to landfills. The problem is that virtually nothing will decompose within a reasonable time if it is disposed of that way. The FTC says that even produce could fail to meet the standards of “biodegradable” within this definition.
The F.T.C.’s “Green Guides” — its environmental guidelines,— state that:
An unqualified claim that a product or package is degradable, biodegradable or photodegradable should be substantiated by competent and reliable scientific evidence that the entire product or package will completely break down and return to nature, i.e., decompose into elements found in nature within a reasonably short period of time after customary disposal.
This is clearly a problem of the definition. After all, would we all be better off buying products that don’t decompose and return to elements found in nature? No. But it does raise a real issue: our “customary disposal” of waste materials is faulty in itself.
If we simply continue packaging trash into plastic bags and sending it off to the dump, there’s very little meaningful progress forward on our efforts to go green. We don’t think this is about false claims by the manufacturers. This is about the entire process of garbage disposal.
And, of course, it adds a powerful argument for composting.
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