BACKGROUND
Our vision is a world thriving, with people and nature living in mutual support of each other. To get there, we need nature-based alternatives to plastic that are made by life. PHBs are one such example.
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Since PHB (polyhydroxybutyrate) is a biomolecule made in every ecosystem on Earth, from trees to the human body, it can serve as an environmentally-degradable replacement for plastic.
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Unfortunately, there are efforts to categorize PHB and other naturally-occurring materials like PHB as "plastic", thereby making it harder to differentiate between natural materials that are environmentally degradable and synthetic materials that are not.
THE LETTER
Efforts to categorize naturally-occurring materials such as PHBs as "plastic" are misleading and damaging to the effort to help solve the plastic pollution crisis.
The purpose of the support letter below is to address those efforts and help advance the cause of environmental remediation through nature-based solutions.
We would be grateful if you could review the letter, and if you agree with it and would be willing to sign it, we would very much appreciate your support.
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THE LETTER
Letter in support of not categorizing PHB as “plastic”
To Whom It May Concern:
Today, the world produces over 600 billion pounds of plastic on an annual basis, and, of that, it is estimated that approximately 20 billion pounds of plastic flow into the ocean every year.
Plastic is a synthetic polymer that is not found in nature, and as a result, does not biodegrade in natural environments, such as the ocean. While the long-term inability of plastic to biodegrade in natural environments has been a key part of its utility since its market introduction, this durable behavior in a number of natural environments has also created significant harm.
Today, plastic is accumulating in the ocean at a rapid pace, causing the deaths of millions of animals and subverting the marine food supply chain. By 2050, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by weight, and by other estimates, the world may be nearing that figure already, since the amount of plastic waste floating on the surface of the oceans is only about 5% of the total amount of plastic in the oceans, with the remainder sinking to the ocean floor or dispersing as microplastics. As a synthetic material that is neither made in nature nor biologically degradable in nature, plastic has become one of the major environmental challenges of our time.
To help stop the accumulation of plastic in the environment, new materials are being identified that are different than plastic: namely, materials that are part of nature, and that, as a result of their natural origin, biologically degrade in nature as a nutrient or food source, like a banana peel or tree leaf.
One such example of a material made in nature is PHB (polyhydroxybutyrate). PHB, which is a form of natural PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), is a material that is made in almost all known life on Earth, from plants and trees to the human body. Since it is made in nature, if PHB ends up in various parts of the environment, it can be consumed as a nutrient or food source by naturally-occurring microorganisms. PHB has been verified as a soil-degradable, freshwater-degradable, and home-compostable material according to testing carried out by a wide range of testing laboratories, including by TUV Austria, a world-renowned independent testing laboratory.
Recently, there have been some efforts to call PHB “plastic”. We believe this is wrong, misleading, and damaging to global efforts to solve the plastic problem.
Plastic, the word, can be used as both an adjective and a noun. To the extent “plastic” can be used broadly to describe something that can be melted and formed, there are many things that exist in nature that meet this definition, including tree sap and beeswax. However, tree sap and beeswax are natural, biodegradable, and do not accumulate in the environment as a result. While lesser known, PHB is also a part of nature. It is made in almost all living things, from plants and animals to the human body. These natural materials are not plastic as the term is used to describe the material creating the environmental harms described above. While they share the ability to be melted and formed, that simply allows them to serve as replacements for plastic. In all respects relevant to the environment, tree sap, beeswax, and PHB are all fundamentally different from synthetic plastic that does not degrade in the environment. Put another way, the plastic waste crisis is not caused by materials like PHB, which is part of nature.
For many years, the world has been trying to solve the environmental problem created by synthetic materials that do not degrade, causing widespread ecosystem pollution. The world’s environmental concern is not due to the fact that plastics are moldable, and government entities are not banning plastic because it can be melted and used to make shapes. Rather, plastic is being banned because it is a synthetic material that does not biodegrade in the environment.
It is important that governments and regulatory bodies clearly distinguish between natural materials and plastic. While PHB is a versatile, meltable, moldable material, it is not the plastic that is accumulating in and harming the environment. To the contrary, PHB is a biomaterial that can be an important part of the solution to the plastic waste crisis. Categorizing PHB as “plastic” will only impede efforts to reduce the world’s reliance on plastic and end plastic pollution.