What are "Oxo-Biodegradable" Bread Bags?
You may have seen the little green earth symbol on the back of our new bags. We'd like to explain what the symbol means and why we are using it.
Our new bread bags feature a type of plastic known as "oxo-biodegradable" plastic. "Oxo-biodegradable" means is that the plastic will degrade, under the right set of circumstances, into biomass (carbon chains) without producing any hazardous by-products in about 18 months time. Now, before we lead you into thinking that this new plastic is the answer to all of our problems, we want to be honest about its shortcomings.
The majority of the world's landfills are anaerobic landfills which means that the trash in that landfill does not come into contact with oxygen. Without oxygen, the biodegrading process of everything from fruits and vegetables to our new oxo-biodegradable bags becomes very slow. Until we begin to support aerobic landfills, much of the benefit of our new bags will not be felt. The good news is that someday, when we make the conditions right, our new plastic bags will biodegrade. Our bags are not suitable for home composting.
The second drawback to our new bags is that they are still a petroleum product, and petroleum is not a renewable resource. The good news is that plastic is recyclable, and our new oxo-biodegradable bags are still recyclable just like our old plastic bags. Many grocery stores have places where you can recycle plastic film because currently most recycling haulers won't take it with your curbside recycling.
You may be asking, "What about corn-based plastic?" Corn is a renewable resource and corn-based plastics are naturally biodegradable. Well, while the technology to make corn-based plastics is improving every day, the technology is not ready for large scale implementation into the bakery business. We hope that the corn-based plastic industry will continue to develop both the technology and the supply chain infrastructure to support the wide-scale roll out of corn-based plastics, and when the day comes when it makes sense to switch, believe me, we will be there. For now, we're doing the best we can with what we have, hence our new oxo-biodegradable bags. We're committed to doing what we can to protect our planet, and while this new plastic may not be the final answer, we hope you will join us in seeing it as a step in the right direction.
So when will you start seeing these bags on the shelf? The first variety that will have it will be the DKB Sprouted Flourless Wheat starting in February of 2009. More varieties will follow as we use up our old bags and swtich to the new ones throughout 2009.
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