CSIRO has developed a biodegradable plastic that’s made from wheat starch. They say:
The wheat starch plastic has similar properties to conventional plastic, but it will break down in the compost heap in 40 to 50 days.
They also claim that it won’t contaminate the food it holds, but I wonder if it is suitable for coeliacs given that wheat starch is known to contain residual gluten ?
(Hat tip to Jeremy for that).
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Wonder how similar this is to those wheat-based packing peanuts. They always reminded me of “plastic cereal”. Mmm, tasty!
Currently we have problems with decreasing supply of food world-wide and increasing demand (due to population growth and developing countries being able to afford more food imports). This combined with the use of food crops for fuel (EG corn to produce ethanol) and using farmland for fuel crops instead of food crops is causing some significant problems.
What we really need to do is to have more food distributed in reusable containers. For example it wouldn’t be difficult to have a supermarket sell milk in the same way that petrol is sold – you put it in your own container and they bill you for the volume.
As for foam packing, it just needs to be reused. Having packing that lasts hundreds of years and is reused may be better for the environment than packing which dissolves when it gets wet.