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MSU Developing Residential Compostable Food Packaging

The PLA material would ideally work in residential compost piles.

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A research team from Michigan State University’s School of Packaging has developed a new material to help consumers cut down our waste, according to a recent report on NBC News 8.

While "reduce, reuse, recycle" has been widely promoted, plastic recycling rates in the United States remain dismally low, with just 8.7% of plastic being recycled, leaving over 90% to end up in landfills, incinerated, or littering the environment. One major challenge in the recycling process is sorting various plastic types, exacerbated by the thousands of different plastics now in use.

Rafael Auras, a professor at MSU, has been working for nearly two decades to create a biodegradable plastic alternative that can be composted rather than recycled. The main issue with recycling is food contamination, as plastics soiled with food residue require extensive cleaning, rendering them unrecyclable. Auras believes composting is the key to addressing this issue.

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New e-book on Flexible Packaging
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New e-book on Flexible Packaging