Engineering360: "Plant based material could replace single use plastic"

The single use bio-degradable plastics are zero-carbon net, but here is a place where you don’t WANT that!

A petroleum plastic that goes into a landfill and never degrades does the same job. That carbon is sequestered and doesn’t count. It is as though the petroleum for it was never pumped up.

In addition, it costs a surprising amount of fossil fuel to fertilize, plant, harvest, and process crops for bioplastics. That goes into the air. Do the full calculation and you may well find that bioplastics are less “green” than the old kind, provided you landfill and don’t burn.