Biodegradable plastic bags are not easy to pollute the environment

It is understood that the Yiwu City currently handles more than 1,200 tons of domestic waste daily, of which up to several tons of plastic waste. All household garbage in Yiwu City has been transported to Tashan Landfill and waste incineration plant for processing. In the Tashan Landfill, colorful plastic bags were mixed in the trash before the garbage was landfilled. It was a bit harsh. "There are too many plastic bags. Every day we push a bulldozer on top of the garbage, and the chain is always entangled with these plastic bags," said the staff. Another staff member said: “A lot of years ago, if you wanted to eliminate a plastic bag, there was basically no other way than to use 'fire'. Now we have landfilled it, and the non-degradable plastic bag was buried in the earth for 200 years. It will not rot." 

In addition to landfilling, 90% of the city’s waste is currently transported to waste incineration plants. Nearly a thousand tons of garbage are burned every day, and plastic waste is also mixed. Wang, head of the environmental monitoring station, said that burning is not the best way to solve plastic pollution. The composition of plastic products is mainly polyethylene or polystyrene. During the combustion process, it will produce "toxic smoke" that is harmful to the human body, and it will easily cause environmental damage and cause harm to the human body. For plastic products, the best way is to recycle and regenerate.

According to the staff of the Environmental Sanitation Department, waste bagging is not the best method. The best practice is to implement the collection and classification of domestic waste, and reduce the amount of waste plastic mixed into the waste incineration or landfill. However, it is very difficult to carry out this task. At present, the city has not really implemented it. To solve this problem, it is necessary to use degradable materials from the source of production, to produce degradable plastic products, and people use biodegradable plastic bags in daily life. Nowadays some new materials, such as corn plastics, are extracted from corn and then polymerized into plastics, which is not easy to pollute the environment. Therefore, when people buy garbage bags, it is best to buy biodegradable plastic bags.