The Pros and Cons of Corn Plastic

Corn plastic is an interesting plastic alternative invented out of necessity. Polylactic acid (PLA), as it’s technically called, is made from fermented corn starch instead of petroleum, but it can also be made from cassava or sugarcane starch. While this bioplastic’s production process hasn’t been perfected, it’s still a giant eco-friendly step in the right direction! Here’s what you need to know about PLA. 

Lowering Costs

PLA has the potential to be cheaper and its prices are still going down. Corn is easy to grow which makes it an accessible and globally viable option. This means that we don’t need to rely on a small handful of companies or manufacturers to produce it. In 1989, one pound of PLA cost $200, by 2006 that price was down to $1. That is a significant price drop, and there’s no reason for it not to fall even more. Because plastic is made of petroleum, oil prices and plastic prices are closely linked. So rising oil prices also make PLA a more affordable option. PLA is still not as cheap as oil because of its much more complex production process, but prices are coming down as new production methods develop. 

Biodegradable 

The bioplastic is biodegradable and even edible! Biodegradable is different than just degradable, it’s significantly better. Anything can technically degrade. Traditional plastic will degrade, it will just take hundreds or thousands of years, and we will never ever really get rid of it. Biodegradable materials take weeks or months to break down, and can be broken down completely in water. This means that PLA won’t be sitting in a landfill for years contributing to Pollution levels. It can come and go quickly and efficiently. 

Carbon Neutral 

Bioplastics produce fewer greenhouse gases than traditional plastics. It’s not just the production process you have to worry about when considering the environmental impact of a product. Corn and other starch plastics don’t emit carbon dioxide when they break down. They also mesh with the environment better because “the plants that bioplastics are made from absorb that same amount of carbon dioxide as they grew”. A 2017 study showed that using corn plastics instead of traditional plastics will cut greenhouse emissions by 25%! It’s difficult to argue that bioplastics like PLA don’t hold earth-changing solutions with those kinds of numbers. 

Things to Keep in Mind 

There are a few things to be aware of while hopping on the corn plastic train. While PLA is definitely eco-friendly, some tweaking needs to be done. More pollutants are produced when making bioplastics compared to traditional plastics. This has to do with the fertilizers and chemical processing used. Corn plastic also requires more land use and does contribute to ozone depletion. 

Do these reasons discredit the progress PLA has made? Absolutely not! Finding long-term sustainable global solutions for plastic is a challenge, but one we have to patiently work towards together! 

We’re Getting There!

Potential is so much more exciting than perfection! It means there are things to look forward to, and goals to strive towards. Bioplastics like PLA are a viable eco-friendly replacement for plastics. They offer a very promising start to an industry that desperately needs to sort itself out when it comes to how much it’s killing ecosystems. 

Sign this petition to demand that U.S. state governments force plastic-producing corporations to pay for the costs they’ve inflicted on our environment!

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