Have you ever tried finding truly biodegradable trash bags?

Plastic Biodegradable Bags by "Green Genius"

Well look no more, we found an amazing product made by a wonderfully green US company. Sam Paul was a business owner who sold traditional plastic bags until his kids convinced him to re-think plastic trash bags and find a greener alternative.

Sam rounded up a team of “Green Geniuses” and got to work inventing a biodegradable trash bag that had the strength and price of regular trash bags. About five years after his kids got him thinking about it, the “Green Genius” company was born.

The Green Genius Range of Bags

I found the Green Genius folks whilst searching my Twitter account, I noticed lots of green tips from the Green Genius tweeters and saw an offer to get a free sample of their biodegradable trash bags… Needless to say I signed up just about as fast as I could type in my details! My next step was to keep browsing their very interesting website, they have lots of information on how their biodegradable plastic works and I found the whole site easy to navigate.

Check out the Green Genius website here;

Checkout the Green Genius Website

Americans use 3 billion pounds of plastic bags annually, the vast majority of which end up in landfills.

This figure truly inspired the Green Genius team to find a biodegradable plastic that really worked so that consumers could buy strong plastic bags guaranteed to break down in a landfill leaving no trace of plastic behind. The solution they found was a plastic bag that is completely edible by microbes.

Step One: They combine plastic with a proprietary additive called EcoPure that bonds organic “nutrients” to the plastic’s molecular structure. The addition of this additive allows the plastic to be eaten by microbes, making the whole bag biodegradable.
Step Two: Whenever a Green Genius plastic bag is disposed of in a microbe-rich environment like a landfill, the microbes are attracted to the embedded “nutrients” in the plastic.
Step Three: Microbes feed on the nutrients, which actually converts the plastic into simpler organic matter like sugars, fatty acids and amino acids.
Step Four: The bag is now entirely edible by microbes, which attracts even more microbes, and a feast ensues!
Step Five: Microbes continue to feed until only the simplest organic matter remains — water, bio-gas (carbon dioxide and methane) and bio-mass (humus).

The biodegradability of these wonderfully eco-friendly bags was determined by the ASTM D-5511 test, for our boffin readers here is the lab report summary:

Treated Green Genius trashbags when tested by ASTM D 5511, which determines anaerobic biodegradation of plastic materials under high solid anaerobic digestion conditions, were found to be biodegradable. This procedure simulates the conditions that would be in a properly operated landfill treating pre-treated household waste as a sole substrate.

Not only are they biodegradable but the Green Genius drawstring trash bags contain 40% recycled plastic content and are still “ridiculously strong”. In fact, their bags match or exceed the puncture resistance of the national brands.
We ordered a big box of the Green Genius tall kitchen bags from Amazon.com and can’t wait to get them and start filling them safe in the knowledge that they will completely biodegrade once they reach the landfill. You can buy your own Green Genius bags on Amazon, see below;

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Emily Longway
Email: emily@thegreengenius.com
Phone: 415.680.8050
www.biodegradablog.com
www.thegreengenius.com

Andi Larson
Email: andi@thegreengenius.com
Blogger, Green Genius
www.biodegradablog.com
www.thegreengenius.com

GET YOUR FREE BAG SAMPLES:
http://www.thegreengenius.com/sample/

I am amazed at all the products that can be made from bamboo. From household items to the entire house! This tall, hearty grass is a renewable resource. One of the great things about bamboo is that it grows so fast. To produce a full grown tree can take up to sixty years, and then another sixty years time for a replacement. Species of bamboo equal to the height and width of a tree take as little as sixty days to mature completely. Bamboo grows everywhere in the world except those places with extremely cold climates, in fact, it grows really well in Texas! It is thought that it originated in China where the first know items made from bamboo have been recorded.

Use of bamboo for building has been around for a very long time but faded out over the centuries. Currently it is making a comeback in many parts of the world and is becoming a very popular resource in the US.

As beautiful as bamboo is when used in flooring, cutting boards and wall covering, it is also used  to make fabric. Anti-bacterial, wicking and biodegradable, bamboo fibers are becoming more and more popular. From bedding to clothing, industries are making more products with bamboo fabric, extolling the virtues of using the alternative source to cotton.

The most noticeable qualities of bamboo fabric are the aesthetic qualities that are gathered from the first touch or sight of bamboo. These qualities include:

• Texture – Bamboo fabric feels softer than the most refined cotton.
• Color – Bamboo fabric tests as well as every other material for color fastness when washing and wear over time.
• Appearance – The fabrics made of bamboo appear to look like other materials which are more expensive, such as silk.

Another reason that bamboo fabric is becoming more popular is because of the anti-bacterial properties that it has. Bamboo requires very little to no pesticides when growing. This makes products made from bamboo fabric, such as bed sheets and bath towels, good for people with allergies. With the fabric unable to host the bacteria and allergens that cause people with allergies to react, these people are able to find a healthy alternative to other fabrics.

Bamboo fabric is also quite ecologically friendly. 100% biodegradable, the fibers used to make bamboo fabric don’t need to be sprayed with chemical additives of any sort. There is also less water wasted for irrigation for bamboo, and there is very little surface runoff from chemicals that could be sprayed on the plants to keep them healthy, as these chemicals aren’t needed.

By now, nearly everyone knows that we are depleting the natural resources of the only planet we have at a rate that is well past sustainable. Can bamboo save the planet? The answer to that question remains to be seen. But this amazing plant and its surging popularity in a huge variety of products offers each of us, a chance to enjoy many of the comforts of modern life without causing irreparable damage to our environment. This Texas family will be using more and more of the products made from Bamboo!!

Summer is in full swing here in Texas and our grass is growing at an incredible rate. We will soon be mowing every week and I have been looking for ways to make our yard work a little greener.

One area that has annoyed me for a long time is that I could not find any compostable biodegradable plastic bags for all of our grass clippings and yard waste. All that changed on a recent visit to a local Ace Hardware store.

I found a brand called “Bag-To-Nature” that produce fully biodegradable and compostable leaf and yard waste bags. I picked up the box and started reading… These bags are awesome, they have all the strength of regular yard waste bags, they won’t leak and are unaffected by moisture. The bags are made from a blend of biopolymers which allow them to totally biodegrade without leaving any residues.

They can be filled with leaves and grass and dumped straight into a backyard composter, they are also compatible with fast action commercial composters.

Lets get technical! These bags have been tested and meet the EN 13432 Standard and ASTM D6400, that’s smart language for “Yes, they do biodegrade!”.

I’m not going to lie, these bags are expensive! I paid about $8 for a box of 10, but they significantly reduce my environmental impact and make me feel good about doing yard work!

P.S. I looked on the Ace Hardware website and they did not have the yard waste bags, but they do have kitchen waste bags;

Bag-To-Nature  Kitchen Waste Bags

We just finished mowing our back yard and filled two of these large Bag To Nature bags, they were strong enough to take some abuse and tied off easily.

Did you know that nearly 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year and that an average family throws away approx. 1,500 plastic trash bags per year!

We wrote about a month ago about the developing trend for high street stores to start carrying bio-degradable trash bags. The closest store that our family could find was a local Sprouts grocery store but all that changed last weekend on a visit to our local CVS pharmacy! There are numerous CVS pharmacies in our local area so we are never too far away from being able to stop in to get supplies and on this particular weekend I was simply calling in to buy some allergy medicine. The pharmacist told me that my prescription would take about ten minutes to fill so I started browsing around the store…

Walking around the store I noticed an entire section dedicated to “green” products including recycled bathroom tissue, recycled kitchen paper and Bio-degradable trash bags. The CVS biobags are made by Perf and are actually the same as the ones I bought at the Sprouts store, except now I only have to drive less than a mile to purchase them.

The packaging is made from 100% recycled paperboard and each bag is made from 70% recycled material.

The CVS bio-degradable rubbish sacks conform to the ASTM D6954 standard. This ASTM D6954 plastic standard test method includes information for exposing and testing plastics that degrade in the environment by a combination of oxidation and biodegradation.

You can get into the “nitty-gritty” of how this test proves Biodegradability of the plastics here;

http://www.astm.org/Standards/D6954.htm

The CVS and Perf philosophy is captured by their catchy slogan “Green should last forever. Plastic shouldn’t.” We couldn’t agree more and we take our hats off to CVS and to Perf for ensuring that every American household has the chance to switch to using bio-degradable trash bags right now.

We took a quick look at CVS.com to see if these new biobags are available online but as of today, they are not, however most people should be able to easily find a local CVS store and purchase some them. The trash bags are 13 Gallon (49 liter) 0.85 Mil bags which we find fit perfectly into both our trash and recycle bins, they are plenty strong enough for a full load of recyclable material or just household waste and you can rest easy knowing that they will degrade into nothing within about a year as opposed to several hundred years for standard plastic trash bags.