A “biodegradable” product has the ability to break down, safely and relatively quickly, by biological means, into the raw materials of nature and disappear into the environment.  These products can be solids biodegrading into the soil (which we also refer to as compostable), or liquids biodegrading into water.  Biodegradable plastic is intended to break up when exposed to microorganisms (a natural ingredient such as cornstarch or vegetable oil is added to achieve this result).

    Sustainable disposal of any product requires that its wastes return to the earth and are able to biodegrade.  Nature biodegrades everything it makes back into basic building blocks, so that new living things can be made from the old.  Every resource made by nature returns to nature – plants and animals biodegrade, even raw crude oil will degrade when exposed to water, air and the necessary salts.  Nature has perfected this system – we just need to learn how to participate in it.

    By the time many resources are turned into products, however, they have been altered by industry in such a way that they are unrecognizable to the microorganisms and enzymes that return natural materials to their basic building blocks.  Crude oil, for example, will biodegrade in its natural state, but once it is turned into plastic, it becomes an unsustainable pollution problem.  Instead of returning to the cycle of life, these products simply pollute and litter our land, air and water.