So last week I went to this hot dog shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn, called Bark. I had never yet been there and was impressed by their delicious (albeit expensive) hot dogs. But what was even more impressive was their dedication to sustainability. They compost their foodstuffs, they built the tables in the restaurant with reclaimed lumber, and they use mostly local, natural (and sometimes organic) ingredients.
But the most interesting part of the evening was when I went to throw my beer cup away, and took a pause at the trash cans. Being as eco-minded as they are, the Bark proprietors have a bin for both compost and recyclables. And, with my plastic cup in hand, I took pause. Which bin does it go in? I looked on the side/bottom of the cup and didn’t see the typical recycling sign… and anyhow, I’ve never heard of a plastic cup that could be recycled via the NYC municipal system.
So, luckily a worker at Bark told me that the plastic cups were compost-able. I had never seen such plastic cups. So I did a little reading up on them: there’s a company called NatureWorks, (owned by the large agri-business Cargill), that has developed a compost-able plastic cup. NatureWorks creates plastic resin pellets (called Ingeo polymers), which are carbon-based (from products such a corn), not oil-based. How they describe it directly on their website, since it’s hard for a layperson like me to distill this into succinct words without help: “From lactic acid we create a molecule called lactide. We remove water, crystallize it and create the high-performance polymer – polylactide (PLA) – which is branded Ingeo™ natural plastic and is used to make a variety of plastics and fibers applications.”
I was wondering where the ‘PLA’ in the name of these cups came from – if you look to buy these biodegradable cups online, there are tons of companies that now sell ‘PLA cups’, the name stemming from the polymer from which they are made. Additionally, from what the NatureWorks website says, these polymers cost less energy to create – they can be produced from corn, after all (or any other abundantly available sugar). In their opinion, “true environmental advantage starts at the beginning… By design, using Ingeo results in 75% less greenhouse gases than the oil-based PET plastic it replaces, even if both end up in a landfill.” That is good to know.
Additionally, in terms of being compost-able, these PLA polymers meet the USA governmental standards, called ‘ASTM D6400 – 04’ for composting plastics. That means the cup that I had (or any PLA-created product for that matter) can be composted in a municipal or industrial aerobic composting facility. Beyond that, it’s hard to say, since it’s impossible to access the USA government specifications for compost without paying cash for the details. Hopefully the standards are relatively strict and don’t allow for harmful chemicals to leech into the ground.
Regardless, I’m going back to Bark and am going to bring a cup home with me, and put it in my backyard compost bin, to see what happens… will post results as they are available!
