Alternatives to plastic are still being sought. For example, we no longer have disposable plastic plates in the supermarket, but only cardboard. Disposable knives? They are made of wood. Trees give us many possibilities and now there is one more: researchers have developed a plastic alternative based on tree bark.
400 million tons of plastic
Of the 400 million tons of plastic produced annually, only 9 percent appears to be recycled. That has to be better. Not only because it is a shame for a product that takes so much effort to produce, but also because a lot of plastic ends up in the sea, ruining the lives of animals, plants and ultimately ourselves. Time to use plastic in a different way and to use an alternative to the typical throw-away things that are normally made of plastic. There are, but not everyone likes them, so better options are still being sought. It now appears to have been found in tree bark.
This is bark that remains after wood has been processed. A Serbian company has decided to work with the same resources used in the plastic industry and it appears to work well. The idea is to use it to make things that are now typical throw-away plastic. That is certainly important in Europe, because we have more and more rules surrounding plastic here. Consider, for example, the bags that you used to get for free everywhere to do your shopping, but which now cost more and more money and are sometimes no longer offered at all.
Tree bark as an alternative
These alternatives are often made from scratch, while Bpacks now has a way to turn waste into an alternative. This concerns waste from the wood industry and it is estimated that approximately 350 million cubic meters of tree bark plastic can be produced. It involves making a kind of granules that are then transformed into sheets, just as it works with plastic. The advantage is that it is not very expensive to switch to this production: the plastic makers already have the material in-house to process this. After use, products made from bark can simply be placed on the compost heap, or directly in your garden, where they can add valuable nutrients to the soil.
75 percent of the materials that Bpack uses come directly as waste from the wood industry, but otherwise the packaging material is 100 percent vegetable. Drinking from a cup made of tree bark may sound a bit far away, but it is closer than you think. And it is a good new way to use trees that are then better for nature, including the trees.
