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"Biodegradable Plastic Bags, Not So Biodegradable"
by Vicky Stein
The average person uses a typical plastic bag for as short a time as 12 minutes before throwing it away, never thinking of where it may end up.
Yet once consigned to a landfill, that standard grocery store tote takes hundreds or thousands of years to break down — much more than a human lifetime. Bags make up an alarming amount of the plastic found in whale stomachs or bird nests, and it’s no wonder — globally, we use between 1 and 5 trillion plastic bags each year.
Biodegradable plastic bags are marketed as more eco-friendly solutions, able to break down into harmless material more quickly than traditional plastics. One company claims their shopping bag “will degrade and biodegrade in a continuous, irreversible and unstoppable process” if it ends up as litter in the environment.
In a study published this week in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers put supposedly eco-friendly bags made from various organic and plastic materials and sourced from U.K. stores to the test. After three years buried in garden soil, submerged in ocean water, exposed to open light and air or stashed in a laboratory, none of the bags broke down completely in all the environments.
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What main point is the author making about biodegradable plastic bags in the article "Biodegradable Plastic Bags, Not So Biodegradable"?
Answer: The main point of the article is that biodegradable plastic bags, despite being marketed as more environmentally friendly, do not break down completely in various environments over time, suggesting they may not be a viable solution to plastic waste.
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