Recently, ENSO Bottles was asked to address the following questions:<\/p>\n
These questions come up all the time, so we thought we’d post our answers to these questions on our blog. \u00a0So here it goes…<\/p>\n
In any environment where there is a\u00a0bio-active\u00a0environment, ENSO bottles will naturally biodegrade. Currently, there is a lot of research going into marine degradation, but there is still a lot of work to do. Marine environments vary drastically from region to region due to various water depths, types of water, etc.\u00a0 Unfortunately, marine environments are more complicated than soil environments.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also, important to understand the type of polymer and how it behaves in marine environments.\u00a0 For example, PET which is used for water, soda, juice and other beverages is a dense polymer and will sink to the bottom.\u00a0 There is very little bioactive environments found directly in marine environments, but at the bottom of those marine environments this is a lot of \u00a0bio-active, microbial activity.\u00a0 This is where the bottles have the highest opportunity to biodegrade.\u00a0 In reality, we need to keep plastics out of the ocean regardless of the kind. \u00a0We have dumped garbage into the oceans for decades and are now dealing with those consequences.\u00a0 Biodegradable plastics are better than non-biodegradable plastics, however in our opinion no plastics in marine environments is the solution.<\/p>\n
Currently, there are no plant based technologies that make environmental sense.\u00a0 We believe plant based plastics are a good fit for packaging that involves food items, so that there is the highest chance possible for making it into a professional composting environment.\u00a0 Plant based plastics require an initial chemical breakdown before microbes can do the rest.\u00a0 This chemical breakdown happens from the exposure to high temp (140 degrees) for 10 days.\u00a0 If plant based plastics do not make it in such environments they will last just as long as traditional plastics. Most people do not realize this.<\/p>\n
Bottles basically have two main disposal paths: recycling or landfills, the third, although small, but important is liter.\u00a0 The technology we utilize allows ENSO bottles to be fully recycled without contaminating the recycle stream, but for those bottles (which are the majority) that end up in bio-active environments, they will naturally biodegrade with the help of microbes.\u00a0 We fully believe that we need to improve recycling so that it becomes the primary solution for plastics.\u00a0 Coke is setting a good direction with using plant material as biochemicals which end up as the same strong polymers we have today, but are from non-fossil fuels.\u00a0 Plant based plastics will last forever in landfills just like standard plastics.\u00a0 They, also do take up farming resources and require A LOT of petroleum resources.\u00a0 Keep in mind that petroleum is also a plant based material.\u00a0 It is fossilize algae that is processed.\u00a0 A true plant based environmental solution will revolve around feedstocks such as algae or waste material from other processes.<\/p>\n
In the end, it is extremely tough (close to impossible) to design a plastic that will be perfect to all environments and all disposal methods.\u00a0 We felt that something needed to be done today and the step in the right direction is to integrate into the existing infrastructure of recycling and landfilling.\u00a0 We believe no matter the type of plastic it doesn\u2019t belong in the ocean or other marine environments.\u00a0 The solution that works today is to allow plastics to be recycled, and will naturally biodegrade if placed in bioactive environments. This is the best solution available today until we move away from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
ENSO Bottles is a small company in comparison to the companies producing hundreds of billions of bottles per year. Somebody needed to step up and do something, and not wait until tomorrow or until the perfect solution arrives.\u00a0 We believe we have taken a step in the right direction by doing something now, and will continue our quest in bringing to market the best available technologies which will solve the problem with plastic pollution.<\/p>\n
Many thanks,<\/p>\n
Danny Clark<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, ENSO Bottles was asked to address the following questions: How do Enso bottle behave in a low temperature marine environment? When Enso bottles eventually fragment in the ocean, do they attract POPs in the same way that Petroleum plastics do, posing potential human health threats through the food chain? Why has Enso chosen petroluem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12,819,903],"class_list":["post-1508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-blogs","tag-enso-bottles","tag-plastic-bottles","tag-sea-pollution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}