Plant-based plastics promise perkier peat

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Friday, February 19th, 2010


Do you know how hard that headline was to write? So hard!

Anyway, scientists at Imperial College London found a form of degradable polymer made of sugar which would, in theory, allow you to add your plastic bottles to your compost pile and watch them degrade into happy, healthy plantfood.

The plastic is made from tree and plant glucose and… here, I’ll let them explain it.

The degradable polymer is made from sugars produced from the breakdown of lignocellulosic biomass, which comes from non-food crops such as fast-growing trees and grasses, or renewable biomass from agricultural or food waste.

My question is whether you could feasibly eat the bottles after you were done with them. I would totally do it, too, at parties and stuff.

The plastic should be commercially viable soon.

via Treehugger

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