Being more responsible at PPi
At PPi we’re very aware that we have a duty of care when it comes to our plastics. We are very keen to mitigate the impact of plastic on the environment in which we live. In the next few years we can see that biodegradable plastics and their like will dominate the market.
We can offer a range of fully biodegradable plastic made from sustainable BioSource’s such as sugar cane, corn starch, hemp and tapioca waste to name but a few.
PPi can also provide polypropylene parts with a programmed shelf life – this means that you specify the duration of time before the material starts to break down; this method has the additional advantage of avoiding micro plastics during the degrading process.
Please get in touch discuss your options for a more environmentally friendly option for your project.
Here’s a little bit about the more environmental options out there*:
Plastics can begin to photodegrade quite quickly, but they take a very long time to break down completely.
Ironically, plastics are engineered to last. You may have noticed that some plastics do, gradually, start to go cloudy or yellow after long exposure to daylight (more specifically, in the ultraviolet light that sunlight contains). To stop this happening, plastics manufacturers generally introduce extra stabilizing chemicals to give their products longer life. With society’s ever-increasing focus on protecting the environment, there’s a new emphasis on designing plastics that will disappear much more quickly.
Broadly speaking, so-called “environmentally friendly” plastics fall into three types:
- Bioplastics made from natural materials such as corn starch
- Biodegradable plastics made from traditional petrochemicals, which are engineered to break down more quickly
- Eco/recycled plastics, which are simply plastics made from recycled plastic materials rather than raw petrochemicals.
