Biodegradable shopping bags buried for three years still work
A new study casts doubt on the viability of biodegradable plastics as an answer to plastic pollution.
So in 2015, he and his graduate students at Plymouth University buried a collection of bags labeled as biodegradable in the school’s garden.
Three years later, when the bags were dug up, they not only had remained intact, they still could carry almost five pounds of groceries.
“It did surprise me that after three years you can still carry shopping home in them,” he said in an interview with National Geographic. “They didn’t have the same strength as they had when they were brand new. But they hadn’t degraded to any meaningful extent.”
The indestructible qualities of biodegradable bags are just one of the findings in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The research documents deterioration
