What’s in a PET bottle?

I am lucky enough to live in a country that supplies clean drinkable tap water so obviously I don’t need to buy bottled water there. However we spend a lot of time in countries where drinking the tap water is not recommended. Bottled water is seen as the only way to go. We disagree. Bonkers? Maybe, but have you considered all the issues – lets start with the bottle.

Most of the plastic bottles water is sold in are made from Plastic #1  Polyethylene terephthalate (PET). PET  is considered generally safe but there are a few issues you should be aware of:

Antimony  is used in the manufacture of PET. This is a heavy metal and one “that poses both acute and chronic health effects in drinking water” . There is evidence that antimony leaches from the plastic bottle into the contents.

The following is an edited extract from Westoffs research in to antimony in plastic bottles.

“Antimony concentrations in the bottled waters ranged from 0.095 to 0.521 ppb, well below the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 6 ppb…. However, storage at higher temperatures had a significant effect on the time-dependent release of antimony…. and could result in an antimony concentration of 376 ppb. …only a small fraction of the antimony in PET plastic bottles is released into the water. Still, the use of alternative types of plastics that do not leach antimony should be considered, especially for climates where exposure to extreme conditions.”  That means hot countries.

You can read the full report here …. and there is more …..

PETs claim to be a safe plastic is based on the fact that it does not contain BPA a known endocrine disrupter. But scientists at Goethe University in Frankfurt claim that other as yet unidentified estrogenic compounds do leach from PET plastic into the water. Lead researcher Martin Wagner said “What we found was really surprising to us, if you drink water from plastic bottles, you have a high probability of drinking estrogenic compounds.” Interested? read  here

And Mr. Sax agrees and  asserts that phthalates are present in PET bottles.  You can read his research here

Then there is  acetaldehyde. This isn’t so much a health issue as one of taste. Acetaldehyde is used in the manufacturing process and can  sometimes end up in the plastic by mistake. It has a strong taste and chemical odor that is detectable in parts 10 to a billion. When you say Coke tastes better from a glass bottle this may be why.

In many countries PET water bottles need to maintain a known composition. This means that they cannot be made from recycled plastics but have to use fresh, virgin oil that could be put to better use. In other countries, countries  that don’t have such stringent regulations, bottles may be made from recycled plastics. In fact “50+% of recycled #4 plastic was sold to developing nations in 2008. Many have much lower standards for their plastics and permit very contaminated plastics to be melted together and used in food packaging” find more ugly facts over at the Flotsam Diaries

Finally PET has a porous surface that allows bacteria and flavor to accumulate so don’t be using that bottle for too long.

In short I don’t want to drink from a bottle that harbors bacteria, leaches antimony and unidentified estrogenic compounds, that potentially contains vile tasting acetaldehyde and is possibly made from contaminated plastic, and we havn’t even got to the contents yet or how to dispose of the bottle.

Next up we will be looking at what’s actually in the bottle

So what do we drink?  We make our own clean water with our Steripen

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Film Plastic

Ok some things you can’t find plastic free and can’t give up. So which plastic packaging has the least impact?

A lot of food now is packaged in lovely looking ,printed, laminated plastic film.  Or to put it more simply several layers of plastic each with different properties stuck together.

This method of making plastic films leads to a very versatile product that looks good and has a wide range of uses.

On the down side these films are difficult to recycle.

Because they consist of different plastics bonded together it is difficult to know what they are and how to treat them and separating the films is tricky and so very expensive. Films therefore often don’t get recycled but burnt or landfilled. You can find out more about the plastic used to wrap your food here.

The best advice here is avoid the fancy graphics and shiny films and go for the simple, eausily recyclable polythene.

Polythene  Wrapped Products

Goodness ON LINE

Internet store Goodness can supply you with a whole load of  beans and other dried stuff in polythene bags. At least they used to. It’s a while since I used them so double check and please report back!

Please note, many  of the companies featured on their website DO sell stuff in film BUT the 3kg bulk buy bags in the Goodness range, (their own range), always come in polythene bags. At least they used to. It’s a while since I used them so double check and please report back!

Their onward packaging is all recyclable or biodegradable.

Tesco In Store

Sell bulk pasta in polythene bags

N.B

Obviously this is not an ideal solution and certainly not a plastic free one, but it is the best I can come up with.

The best solution is of course  to buy loose then you could use your own  bags and create no waste at all. There are very few shops around that do sell loose but  you can find them here.

 

 

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Metal Lids With Plastic Linings

Back in the early days of the boycott I didn’t think of glass jars as an issue – after all they weren’t  plastic so it wasn’t a problem. Of course it was you numbskull.

Look at the lids – that white sticky stuff – the seal? That’s plastic that is…

Googling around and I found this from the containers and packaging site

“Plastisol liners are one method that helps seal metal closures onto containers. Plastisol is a PVC gasket that is used in metal continuous thread and lug (sometimes called twist) closures. It is normally applied to metal lids in a ring shape on the inside of the lid at the point where it will match up with the landing of the bottle.

Plastisol material starts out as a solid. After being heated properly, Plastisol becomes liquidus and forms around the landing of the container that is being sealed. When the material cools it begins to cure, or solidifies, which then creates a tight vacuum seal.”

PVC? Not sure I like that idea.There’s lots more information here on the poison that is  PVC. And despite the industry claiming it is perfectly safe, research is being done into alternatives.  Why you might ask – and so do I. Answers? I have none but”The environmentalist group Greenpeace has advocated the global phase-out of PVC because they claim dioxin is produced as a byproduct of vinyl chloride manufacture and from incineration of waste PVC in domestic garbage.”

 

One alternative could be this from k-online

The development of PVC-free compounds for lug-type twist closures and the corresponding production processes took place before the background of the 4th Amendment 2007/19/ EC of the Plastics Directive 2002/72/EC, which no longer permits the use of some phthalates as plasticisers in PVC-based seals of closures that come into contact with food. This marked an end to the exceptions with which EU and national authorities made allowances for the industry’s difficulties in finding solutions to the migration problems. Accordingly, manufacturers of metal lug closures, food producers, bottlers and retailers are under a great deal of pressure to bring products to market that are environmentally friendly, user-friendly and, above all, comply with statutory regulations.

This TPE is free of plasticisers and PVC and is useable with a wide range of lug-type twist caps (from 38 to 82 mm in diameter). Besides those properties that are indispensible in a sealant – good processability, pasturisability, compliance with the law – this new PVC-free compound ensures compliance with the valid migration thresholds even for oily foods with longer shelf-lives (e.g., antipasti). This was confirmed * in multiple individual tests. Thus vacuum twist seals with sealant compounds by Actega DS are the preferred solution for low-migration food storage and help food industry customers keep their products from becoming entangled in the problems associated with unhealthy packaging. Moreover, the new product also addressed the need to maintain a reliable vacuum until the closure is first opened and user-friendly resealability.

So I try not to use jars.

Look here for other sneaky plastic.

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Laminated Cartons /Tetra Paks

They might look cardboard and many think they are even some kind of waxed paper but tetrapaks and the like are basically a thin plastic container reinforced with card.
Or rather laminated cartons composed of paper/card and layers of polythene.

Made How?
Cartons, are made up of paperboard (73%), plastic (22%) and aluminium foil (5%).
The board is made from wood pulp boiled at 160 degrees to remove the Lignin, a chemical compound and separate the fibres from the cellulose.
The fibres are washed and cleaned. Some are bleached white. The fibres are then used to make card with the white face on the outside. Any design work is printed onto the white bleached side.
Three layers of molten polythene are sprayed on the inside and a single layer on the outside. This will protect the future contents, such as orange juice and the design printed on the outside.

They Have A Recyclable Logo

Yes they can be recycled but it is a complex procedure and so not very cost effective. All the components have to be separated and then individually reused.

Laminated cartons cannot be included with normal paper recycling. Most local councils offer Tetrapak recycling as part of their kerbside collections. If not, they can usually be taken to your local recycling centre. To find out more visit www.tetrapakrecycling.co.uk which includes an interactive map showing which local councils offer kerbside collections or have collection facilities at recycling banks.

Recyclable Does Not Mean Recycled

Vital Statistics

Tetra Pak from Sweden are the best known. over 130 billion tetra paks are manufactured each year.
Tetra paks are used in over 150 countries, around the world.

Wikipedia claims that As of 2011, 20% of Tetra Pak cartons are recycled globally, with countries like Belgium, Germany, Spain and Norway showing local recycling rates of over 50%.

Tetra Versus PET aplastic bottle

From the Guardian

“A drastic difference also exists when evaluating the “water footprint” of plastic bottles and Tetra Pak cartons. It takes anywhere between 1 to 2 litres to manufacture a 500ml PET bottle. The water footprint for a 500ml Tetra Pak carton stands at 200 ml of water. Tetra Pak can argue that the trees from which the cartons are made come from managed farms, and furthermore, those trees absorb carbon dioxide during their lifespan. PET bottle promoters retort that the amount of fossil fuels consumed to make bottles is a sliver of the world’s supply, and the recycling process is energy efficient.”

More

You can find other sneaky plastics HERE

With thanks to The Technology Student

Read treehugger on Tetrapaks

Clingfilm/ Saranwrap, foodwrap and poisons

Not being much of a Suzy Home maker I have hardly ever in my life bought cling film. Rather glad now I’ve found out that PVC is added to most food wrap film  to make it more clingy. Though there are some films that do not contain it such as LDPE cling film.

PVC clingfilm contains Phthalates. These are added to make the plastic stretchy.

They have also been linked to possible birth defects and asthma and other nasty things.

And it gets better. PVC is known as the “poison plastic”. Toxic chemicals are used in its creation. One of those is vinyl chloride monomer (VCM). VCM is a gas and a known carcinogen causing cancerous tumors in the brain, lungs, liver and various tissues in humans.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is  a chlorinated plastic 2011-22.7 changmai 2 (49)

Dioxins are unintentionally, but unavoidably produced during the manufacture of materials containing chlorine, this includes halogenated plastics, i.e made from chlorine or fluorine.

Burning these plastics can release dioxins.

Dioxin is a known human carcinogen and the most potent synthetic carcinogen ever tested in laboratory animals.

This means that that clingfilm is hard to recycle as it gives off nasty and dangerous fumes.

PVC cling film is not at the moment recycled – not that it cant be but that it is not as easy to recycle as LDPE clingfilm (film with out PVC)

According to some it is almost impossible to tell PVC clingfilm and polythene cling film apart.

PVC cling film is often used in the food industry.

China produces large amounts of PVC clingfilm.

Foodplast -( they make food wrap) – say sure leaching happens but the levels are completely safe.

How to cut the cling film

Am I teaching my granmother to suck eggs?

  • Keep it in a bowl with a plate on top.
  • Use a re-usable container with sealable lid.
  • Kilner jars (glass) are good and come in all sizes.
  • Get a sandwich box.
  • Don’t ever believe that wrapping your legs in plastic will burn any more calories than the energy it takes to wrap your legs in plastic.
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Degradation Initiators & Degradable Plastic

Traditional plastics do not biodegrade. Of course plastic breaks, tears and cracks. It weathers and sunlight makes it brittle, It falls apart – it degrades – but only into smaller pieces of plastic. And that can take hundreds of years. See Why Plastic Doesn’t Rot.

Plastic litter is not surprisingly increasing exponentially with disastrous environmental consequences.

But suppose there was a way of making non-biodegradable plastic, biodegradable? The plastic industry argue that they can do just that by means of chemical adatives known as degradation initiators.

Types Of Degradable Plastics

The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has defined six types of degradable plastics.

  • Degradable – breaks down in some way.
  • Photodegradable, broken down by light
  • Oxidatively degradable broken down by oxygen.
  • Hydrolytically degradable. Broken down by water
  • *Biodegradable – can be broken down by microbes to mass, water and co2 but with no indication of how long that might take. May also need chemical addatives to make this process possible.
  • *Compostable – degrade at a rate that’s similar to other types of compostable materials, and they result, again, in water, carbon dioxide, humus, and inorganic compounds. Compostable plastics biodegrade naturally.They do not need additonal addatives to break down the polymers as they made from natural materials that microorganisms recognise.

This is a confusing list because the last two (*) seem to refer to the natural process of biodegrading while the others refer to  plastic with added degradation initiators. It is important to note that there is a huge difference. Degradable does not mean biodegradable despite what the plastics industry tries to imply.

What Are Degradation Initiators

Degradation initiators are added to the plastic mix in amounts of up to 2% of the total composition. Very basically, these addatives break the long unnatural plastic polymers into shorter recognisable polymers that microbes can attack and digest – or biodegrade.

English: illustration of the Oxo-Bio-Degradati...

English: illustration of the Oxo-Bio-Degradation is, as the name describes, a two-step process whereby the conventional polyolefin plastic is first oxo-degraded to short-chain oxygenated molecules (typically 2-4 months exposed) and then biodegraded by the micro-organisms (Bacteria, Fungi, etc.). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The process happens as follows.

  • Microbes are attracted to the additive;
  • They “crack” the long polymer allowing acces to other microbes and water.
  • Eventually these will break down huge polymers into smaller and smaller bits.
  • These smaller bits are then vulnerableto other microbes.

More Research

That’s the theory and it sounds good BUT as Green Plastics point out

“you can add an additive to normal, petroleum-based plastic that will make it become brittle and crumble in sunlight: this is referred to as making “photodegradable” plastic. Other additives can be put into plastic that will make plastic break down by oxidation: this is referred to as making “oxo-degradable plastic.”

These methods will make the bulk of the plastic appear to disappear; however, the small pieces (or even find “sand”) that is produced by this effect is still small pieces of plastic.  Nothing has changed. Over a matter of years, it is possible for the pieces to become small enough to be assimilated by microorganisms, but there is still a lot of research that needs to be done to verify how long this might take.  In the mean time, they are just very small pieces of plastic.”

Or this by Eco Savvy

“The only difference between “oxo-biodegradable” plastic and petroleum based plastic is the presence of an oxo-formulated additive in concentrations of 1-3% (metal salts) within the petroleum based plastic.  This additive allows the petroleum based plastics to degrade in the presence of oxygen, light, heat and moisture.

Oxo-biodegradable plastic is designed to degrade in the open environment and this short timeframe of biodegradation is not necessary. Furthermore, a high rate of conversion is not desirable because the conversion to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide contribute to the warming of the atmosphere, hole in the ozone layer and depletion of carbon available for the soil.”

The Right Place At The Right Time

The difficulty is of course ensuring that the plastic doesn’t start biodegrading in normal conditions so that the strength of the plastic product is not jeopodised. Biodegradation is designed to start in certain extreme conditions.

As 75% ofplastic ends up in landfill, most addatives are designed to work in landfill conditions.

While products may start to degrade outside of  the specified conditions but the process will take much longer.

The obvious flaw in this solution is the wrong product in the wrong place. For example plastic that has been manipulated to degrade quickly in a landfill conditions ending up as litter on the roadside where it will not degrade quickly.

Other Considerations

So, to become degradable, plastic has to be further chemically engineered. Obviously, this is by no means a natural process (as biodegrading is normally understood to be), rather it requires complex chemical eginerring.

The composition of these chemical addatives is secret and known only to the companies who produce them.

Biodegradable plastics are made using traditional (usually petrochemical based) plastics. They don’t always break down into harmless substances.

Confusing & Misleading Marketing

Because the initiators are bio-based this has led to the process being described as bio degradable. .

Which has led to confusion because now bio -degradable plastic could be a compostable plastic that biodegrades naturally OR plastic that has had a degradation initiator added to make it bio-degrade.

Compostable plastic is a plastic that can biodegrade with out chemical addatives within a certain amount of time.

The Guardian reported in October 2014 that

Last month, the FTC sent warning letters to 15 additional marketers, informing them that their claims “may be deceptive”. The FTC also requested “competent and reliable scientific evidence proving that their bags will biodegrade as advertised”. This time, the term of offense is “oxodegradable”, implying the bag will break down in time when exposed to oxygen.

And

“The plastic is not degrading, it’s fragmenting,” Greene said. Over time, as opposed to breaking down into less hazardous organic components, these plastic products break down into lots of small, equally toxic bits.

Why make plastics degradable?

Why go to the effort of making degradable plastic bags when we already have naturally compostable products such as paper bags and cornstarch bags. Why not use plastic for things we don’t want to rot away like drainpipes and use naturally biodegrading materials for disposable packaging?

Useful stuff to know

Degradable, biodegradable or compostable plastics – whats in a name
Why leaves rot and why most plastics don’t at Why Plastic Doesnt Rot

Degradable, biodegradable or compostable

So most plastics are made from oil and most plastics do not biodegrade. See how and why here… And yet you will find plastics described as degradable ...
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Compostable Plastics Index

Plastic was the name given to early synthetic products such as cellophane,  that were derived from cellulose. These plastics  were biodegradable. Then they learnt how to make ...
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Biodegrading and degradation – Plastic Lifespan,

So most plastics are made from oil and most plastics do not biodegrade. See how and why here... But what does that actually mean? Biodegrading Biodegradation ...
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Plastic eating microbes

Is this a good idea?- much as I hate bad plastic I am rather attached to the computer and Dyson. Will they disappear before my very eyes ...
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Degradation Initiators & Degradable Plastic

Traditional plastics do not biodegrade. Of course plastic breaks, tears and cracks. It weathers and sunlight makes it brittle, It falls apart – it degrades – but ...
Read More

What are plastic bags made from

Most plastic carrier bags are made from polyethylene, a kind of plastic. Polyethylene, or polythene as it is known in the UK comes in different forms. The top three used in bag manufacture are

High Density PolyEthylene – HDPE- is used to make supermarket type carrier bags.

Low Density PolyEthylene – LDPE- used to make soft clear bags like the ones used for packing of vegetables, toys and clothes.

Biaxially Oriented polypropylene -BOPP- is the crisp crystal clear stuff used for greeting cards, the plastic wrapping round boxes of tea etc and food packs like pasta.

Find out about the  various types of plastic and what they are used to make here….