Biodegradable Plastic Bags

Did you know that all our polythene bags are biodegradable? If not, and even if you did, we thought we’d let you know how and why our bags degrade.

All our films contain an additive called DEG 68. This additive sits there nice and quietly, not doing anything, until your bags come into contact with direct sunlight. This means that your biodegradable plastic bags will quite happily sit in the boxes we deliver them in for months or even years without degrading. But once your customer takes the bag out of the shop and into the day light, DEG 68 is activated.

Once activated, DEG 68 starts to work very slowly breaking down the polythene. In fact, your bag could still last a couple of years if it is being reused as a bag for life.

The real degradation starts once the bags hit landfill. Landfill sites become extremely hot due to so much decomposing waste and heat speeds up the degradation process of our plastic bags. The experts even say that if the bags are kept at a constant temperature of around 50°C that the polythene can take as little as 2 months to completely degrade. And even if they take a little longer than this it still isn’t as bad as the thousand or so years that some journalists claim!

And the best bit is once the bits of bag are small enough; they can start to be biologically degraded by microorganisms. This process turns the tiny bits of plastic into water, carbon dioxide and a small amount of non-toxic matter- and that’s it!

So why not have one of our biodegradable logos put onto your next set of bags?

This post was written by Louise @ Burgass

Categorised in: News