Plastic. It's a wondrous material that has been a boon to humanity, allowing us to produce products which we could have never before dreamed of. Of course, we have also learned that plastic has a very dark side, from it's production using hydrocarbons, to the challenges with it's end-of-life.
We often get asked why we chose to go the route of placing our loose chalk in plastic bags and why we didn't choose to put it in compostable, biodegradable or even just paper bags. To be fair, it's a good question and one that we really had to dig into when balancing many factors. Things like energy and material inputs, durability, moisture barrier properties and of course how to deal with them at end of life.
We had initially thought that compostable or biodegradable bags would be an easy and clear winner, but after many countless hours of research, we realized that biodegradable and compostable bags were, in general, anything but green. The main challenges associated with these bags is how they are disposed of, collected and eventually processed. You see, in most municipalities biodegradable bags and compostable bags cannot be placed in your green bin. There are many reasons for this, from facilities not having the ability to sort biodegradable plastic from non-biodegradable plastic in compost, to the bags not being broken down completely and causing issues around compost distribution (many instances where landowners and farms have rejected compost due to high uncompensated plastic content).
Paper has its own challenges, such as very high water and energy usage in production, durability challenges and also the lack of vapour barrier which can result in product spoilage in humid environments.
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