`This bag will disappear" is the claim on the plastic carrier bag which Tom Robinson holds proudly aloft while explaining that the bag has already begun to degrade. "This plastic bag will turn into water, a small amount of carbon dioxide and, natural mineralisation," says Robinson. "It can take 60 days, or up to six years, depending on how the degrading process has been programmed beforehand, and other factors. It has been independently tested and was found to be suitable for direct contact with food. It is also completely harmless when buried in soil after it has degraded because plastic comes from oil, and oil originally comes from biomass compressed over many years." The assertions connected with the degradable plastic bag cause many a raised eyebrow and barely contained scepticism but Robinson seems unperturbed.
"We welcome questions," he says. "We want people to question this. We want it to be scrutinised and investigated." Originally from Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, Robinson was sent to boarding school in Greenwich at the age of eight and has lived in England ever since. He has been working solely with plastic and mostly with retailers here and in Britain for the past 10 years. He has worked with ICI, BP and British Polythene Industries, from where he was seconded to work with Irish Polythene Industries.
He now works with Symphony Plastics in Hertfordshire, the company behind the technology which produced the degradable carrier bag. Robinson is one of the chemists responsible for the concept of a "Bag for Life", which he sees as a limited success. Although a good idea, it required shoppers to change their habits which, apparently, is not something that comes easy to most. "Shoppers had to remember to bring their bag to the supermarket. And, unfortunately, when they forgot it, they would usually buy another one - which is sort of defeating the object of the exercise," says Robinson smiling. "Also, the `Bag for Life' costs money, and at the other end of the checkout there is the ordinary carrier bag which costs nothing. The `Bag for Life' concentrated on re-use, whereas the degradable carrier bag simply degrades.
"Recycling is a bit of a non-starter when it comes to plastic as there are 80 different types of plastic," explains Robinson, taking my pen and indicating the four types of plastic contained in it, "and the person doing the separating would probably need a degree in polymer chemistry to differentiate between the plastics and put them in the correct recycling bin. And can you imagine the size of the recycling centre?" The facts and statistics surrounding plastic are guaranteed to concern even the most avid consumer. On his first day at ICI, Robinson asked an eminent research chemist whether plastic ever broke down and his lecturer replied, "If you put it in a vat of acid and buried it beneath the Irish Sea, in 50,000 years it would begin to think about breaking down".
Irish retailers alone use almost 300,000 tons of plastic a year, one-third of which is categorised under "not for resale" - which includes all the plastic wrapping on goods. Two-thirds of this is plastic carrier bags, which end up in landfill or blowing about in trees and hedges (now known colloquially as "witches knickers"). When visiting Ireland over the years, Robinson was struck by the amount of plastic in hedgerows. "It's like modern-day tumbleweed," he says, "and there is a lot of it around. That's one of the reasons why we are launching the degradable bag here. Also, Irish people use their carrier bags in bins in their homes, which people in Britain don't do to any great extent. And the Irish Government has put a tax on carrier bags which, as far as I know, is unprecedented.
"We think people here are concerned about the plastic problem and they would welcome a degradable bag. We're trying to sell something green to the Irish," he says. "The degradable bag won't cost retailers any more than they are already paying for their carrier bags, and the shopper won't have to pay for them either. They cost a lot more to make, but there is no point in charging more for them because people just won't buy them. For this to work, it has to be at no extra cost. Also, no one has to change their shopping habits."
www.degradable.net