Alba Cheese, a local manufacturer of high-quality, authentic Italian cheese is proud to say it uses stretch wrap from BioGone. BioGone produces a range of plastic wrapping and packaging products that will biodegrade away when sent to a landfill.
Initially some samples were provided to Alba and they found the products were good quality. Once they understood the large environmental benefit of being biodegradable in landfills, they were even more enthusiastic to switch to it. It gave them the confidence they were looking after the environment as well in their operations.
Alba cheese has a commitment to be as sustainable as they can in their operations. As the company grows, they are becoming more aware of what they can do more and products like BioGone’s fit their goals nicely. When asked what Alba though of BioGone’s products they replied, “Excellent product. Not that it is just environmentally friendly but excellent product compared to others we have tried in the past”.
Not only for their own peace of mind, Alba Cheese wants their customers know too they are going above and beyond to help the environment out. They believe not only will this promote their products, but it educates their customers that these better buying options are available. Many companies are trying to be sustainable these days and Alba are a good example of how BioGone allows a company to achieve some of these goals.
BioGone is an Australian company founded after the owners realised that our normal operating practices in using plastic were doing a lot of harm to the environment. Many products such as stretch wrap are only used for a one-way trip of a few hours then more than likely discarded to a landfill to sit there for several hundreds’s of years. This happens 1000’s of times a day across Australia. Australia uses about 1.5 million tonnes of plastic a year and only a small percent is recycled.
Another way to look at it, we are using plastic products for a very short time but are leaving future generations to have to deal with it. BioGone owners could not accept that and so started developing a range of common, single use plastic products that are used by various business types that once discarded to a landfill, the natural microbes could digest the plastic away as food. The method used to do this is to add in a proprietary organic additive to the plastic raw material. The additive has no change on the plastic properties except for when it is disposed to a microbe rich environment such as a landfill. There the microbes see the food and start to digest it away and, in the process, break the polymer down so they can digest that too. The only bi-products are a biogas evolved and a biomass (humus) or plant fertiliser remaining. It is not a degradable action the results in small plastic bits remaining, but a full biodegradable process.
The biodegradation time frame is a question a lot of people ask. The easier way to answer it is to consider the biodegradation time factor can be thought of as 20 times faster than a conventional plastic of the same size. While this is not as fast as say an apple core biodegrading away, it is still quite fast relative to a conventional plastic. Plus, it means we are dealing with our plastic waste in our lifetime, not leaving it for future generations to deal with.
For a number of its products BioGone is the only manufacturer in the world for them. Products such as landfill-biodegradable packing tape, stretch wrap, Packing list Enclosed-type stick on envelopes, strapping and more are only produced by BioGone.
BioGone fully recognise this is not a panacea to the whole plastic problem. Their plastic has no benefits in the ocean or water ways for example as there are few microbes there to digest the plastic away. However, since most of our plastic waste does go to landfill, then this is a very good place to start. That is why they stress their materials are landfill-biodegradable as it tells the user where they have to dispose of the product in order for it to biodegrade
Another benefit of BioGone’s plastic products is that they are mainstream recyclable too. Even encouraged. The additive stays inert in the plastic while it is reprocessed. It doesn’t require any different processing equipment and the final product will not be any different. Due to the additive being diluted down however, it is unlikely a new product from the recycled material would be landfill-biodegradable. BioGone also supplies some products made from home compostable plastics.
This are plant-based materials not fossil fuel based materials which many buyers are starting to seek out. It has advantages of being quite fast to biodegrade in landfills or consumers home compost bins. Its disadvantages are that it is a slight bit more costly and is not recyclable. In many cases however this is a good sustainable option.
For Further information contact www.biogone.com.au