Heller is shaking up the plastic furniture industry by embedding their products with an organic enzyme that speeds up the biodegradation process once products are buried in landfill. This means that unwanted end-of-life products will convert to nutrient-rich soil within a few months without leaving any microplastics.
‘Starting April 1, Heller products are transitioning to feature regenerative, microplastic-free technology,’ according to the home page of the company’s website. Unlike some of Trump’s announcements, this does not appear to be an April Fool’s joke.
Heller has worked with Worry Free Plastics (WFP) to add their enzyme (less than 1% of load weight) to traditional LDPE during the rotational moulding process favoured by Heller. The enzymes are made with ‘an agent of organic nutrients and compounds that are food sources for microbes in landfills, where our agent tricks the microbes into seeing plastic waste as food.’
‘WFP agent attracts microbes that start colonizing on the surface of the plastic. The enzymes secreted by the microbes render the plastic hydrophilic (water-loving). As a result, a film (bio-film) that is rich in microbes and moisture forms on and adheres to the surface of the plastic. Microbes then hydrolyze the plastic using secreted enzymes and water. As the individual polymer chains are broken down into single monomers, the microbes consume the polymer matrix. During this process, the microbes send out a signal, attracting more microbes to feed on the plastic mass. At the end, most of the CO2 and other materials formed during the earlier stages are consumed, leaving behind humus, and biogases which are captured for clean energy,’ according to the company’s website.
This is a very attractive solution for Heller (and other manufacturers) as it is a pure drop-in solution, in that no changes are required to existing production technologies or systems and no significant investment in retraining is needed.
Of course, landfill is the least preferred option for any plastic and Heller has more good news here as their products can be recycled along with traditional plastics. Heller appears to have found a highly innovative solution allowing them to continue to produce their existing range of plastic furniture while addressing the growing end-of-life concerns around traditional plastics. However, this solution fails to tackle the upstream issues caused by the production of plastics, which is increasing at an alarming rate, threatening to consume 15% of the available carbon budget by 2050. While this innovation is a commendable step in the right direction Heller and other manufacturers need to do far more to address the plastics crisis.
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