Last week they sent us some freebies for helping them get their name out into the green-o-sphere;

Our Green Genius Biodegradable Goodies!

We love the big green shopping tote and will be using it for our groceries to help spread the word about biodegradable plastics.

As for the new line of biodegradable food storage bags, they are truly awesome. I’ve already started packing my sandwiches for work using them and the double zipper seals keep my lunch perfectly stored until its “Eatin Time!”

Biodegradable Sandwich Bags

Once again, we have to say a big thankyou to the Green Genius Company and their commitment to the environment.

If you are interested in getting your hands on some biodegradable Green Genius bags then check them out here;

http://www.thegreengenius.com/

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

So why are plastic biodegradable bags so important?
The Green Genius team realized that virtually every piece of plastic ever invented (unless it was incinerated) still exists! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that everlasting pieces of trash are a bad thing indeed.

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.

Here’s how the Green Genius biodegradable bags work:

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: (888) 338-3138
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/

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.

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.

Perf Go Green Biodegradable Trash Bags

They are made by “Perf” and are named “Go Green” trash bags. The large trash bags, 26″ by 28″ (66cm by 71.1cm), are made from post consumer recycled plastics with plastic additives which conform to the ASTM D6954 standard. After researching the standards I believe the mechanism by which the bags completely biodegrade is as follows;

(Let’s put our scientist brains in…)

Total degradation of “green” plastics is a two stage process which happens as a result of exposure to heat, UV light, mechanical stress, or a combination of all three. Firstly the plastic is converted, by reaction with oxygen, to molecular fragments which are able to absorb water. Secondly these smaller oxidized molecules degrade by bio-degradation. The microbial growth on the molecular fragments leads to the formation of Carbon Dioxide, Water and biomass. There is no harmful residue left over.

Perf guarantee that the plastic will totally degrade in 2 years. The box is even made from 100% recycled paperboard. Perf produces a whole range of biodegradable plastic bags, you can view the full range here;

http://www.perfgogreen.com/products.html

We enjoyed getting home and finally putting some biodegradable garbage bags to use. The green tall kitchen bags fitted our pull out trash can perfectly and the bag handles make them super easy to tie off and throw away.

Our search for biodegradable plastics isn’t over yet though, we are going to continue to “vote with our wallets” and seek out more earth friendly plastic alternatives. Watch this space!

Even Our Dogs Approved!

image by Cezary Okupski

The reason may be that no large corporations are producing biodegradable plastic bags, we did manage to find small biodegradable dog waste bags, but we really wanted a solution for our kitchen and other household waste.
A quick internet search uncovered several smaller companies emerging as producers and retailers of the much sought after “biobags”. This is our round up of the most interesting out there;

1/ Lets Start by Defining “Bio-Degradable”

The terms biodegradation, biodegradable materials and compostability are very common but frequently misunderstood. Hopefully we can clear that up by defining the characteristics that a material must have in order to be defined as “biodegradable” or “compostable”. A recent European standard stated that a compostable material must have the following characteristics:

Biodegradability is determined by measuring how fast something degrades or metabolizes into carbon dioxide. To be classed as biodegradable 90% of a product must be essentially “gone” in less than 6 months.
Compostability involves seeing how quickly a product dissapears into compost. The test literally measures how much of the product you can still see in a pile of compost after 3 months! Other key tests involve actually using compost including the product to measure its effects on plant growth, essentially an ecotoxicity test. If you want to read more there is a great site maintained by the association of European Bioplastics;

http://www.european-bioplastics.org/

2/ Biodegradable Bags in the USA

BioBag is a US company that sells certified 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable bags made from a patented material, Mater-Bi. Their product is available in select natural food stores throughout the US and I will be trying to track one down locally.

When placed in a composting environment their BioBags will biodegrade in 10 – 45 days, leaving no harmful residue behind.

You can find out more information regarding BioBags at their site;

http://www.biogroupusa.com/

3/ Biodegradable Bags in the UK

Another company priding itself on creating biodegradable plastic alternatives is Biopac in the UK;

Their products are made from 100% waste potato starch and their new “Biopac Good Bag” rots down completely and safely turning into healthy compost in just 12 weeks if put on a compost heap. The Biopac bags can also be discarded within domestic food-waste trash. The bags ultimately turn into carbon dioxide, water, and non-toxic raw materials, and all that from a potato!

Another cool product is their cornstarch cups which are an equal quality alternative to plastic, and being smash proof, they are perfect for outdoor events! They produce cold cups which are available in different sizes with the option of both slot and dome lids.

You can find out more information regarding Biopac products at their site;

http://www.biopac.co.uk/cornstarchbagsnews/

So happy shopping and let us know if you find any local suppliers of biodegradable plastic alternatives, the future for landfills looks alot brighter!

If you want to read more about biodegradable plastics there is a great book available from Amazon.com all about green plastics;