The State charges that the companies’ claims that their bottles biodegrade are false.
“In so doing,” said Sen Robert W McKnight, the PEC’s chairman and a former Florida state legislator, “the attorney general may not be aware of the timing that was agreed upon by her state legislature together with Californians Against Waste (CAW) to allow completion of our currently ongoing R&D programme to develop a biodegradability standard specification acceptable to the State Senate’s Environmental Quality Committee before enacting SB567.”
The latter, broader measure was written to supersede the existing law governing plastic food and beverage containers.
“We want to partner with the State of California to provide indisputable research data on this important environmental issue in the form of a bonafide ASTM or equivalent standard specification that readily communicates proven biodegradation information to the consumer,” said Senator McKnight.
Dr Charles J Lancelot, the PEC’s executive director, emphasised that, to date, the PEC and its members companies in fact have produced a large body of laboratory-scale testing data with these additive systems.
“These tests are executed under conditions that have been carefully worked out to come as closely as possible in the laboratory to conditions found in actual US landfills,” said Dr Lancelot.
He noted that it’s widely recognised in the industry that biodegradation occurs in all US landfills receiving waste today at rates dependent upon moisture level, and that the refined laboratory testing conditions in place today approximate those in landfills in the wetter parts of the US, accessible to just under half of the population.
“Unlike in commercial composters, which receive only between 5-8% of municipal solid waste and which operate on cycles of 180 days or less, landfill biodegradation processes, even for readily biodegradable food wastes in the wetter landfills, take several years,” he said.
Source: Plastics Environmental Council
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