Polythene bags are everywhere – literally – and the world is not sure how to deal with them. Shopping bags made from polythene have become ubiquitous, showing up everywhere from the summit of Mount Everest to the deep ocean floors to polar ice caps.
The main concern is the environmental challenge they pose. There have been attempts to create environment-friendly alternatives but nothing has worked – until now. A Bangladeshi scientist says the South Asian country has the answer.
Professor Dr Mubarak Ahmed Khan and his team have created a type of polythene from jute cellulose that looks and feels like plastic but – according
to him – is ‘completely’ biodegradable.
“This means, the bag will not cause any harm to the environment when it decomposes,” Dr Mubarak, a scientific adviser to Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation, told UNB. “The colour used in the bag is extracted from vegetables and the binder is the same edible one used in capsules.”
The bag, named ‘Sonali’ after the moniker of jute, can support more weight than conventional polythene bags, he says. It can survive about five hours in water and gradually melts after this period. It takes the bag five to six months to decompose on land. “If the bag is thrown into water, it’ll decompose and become food for fish because it has cellulose. Burn it, you’ll get ashes that can be used as fertiliser,” he says. “It’s compostable and biodegradable.”
Dr Mubarak says the so-called biodegradable polythene bags that are coming to the market are mostly made from starch and they contain plastic. “What makes our biopolymer stand out is that it doesn’t have any plastic in it,” he says.
Polythene bags are cheap to make and durable. By 1979, shortly after they became available, polythene bags controlled 80% of Europe’s bag market, according to UN Environment. In the following years, they replaced almost all paper bags around the world.
Last year, the UN estimated that polythene shopping bags were being produced at a rate of one trillion a year.
