It biodegrades! These cups break down in the landfill! These plates won’t look like plates in a thousand years. That Styrofoam you used to use will still be around for hundreds if not thousands of years!

Well that’s just great. So we’re growing trees, bamboo, and potatoes, to make paper plates and cups, bamboo plates, bowls, and clamshell containers, and starch disposable flatware, respectively. Oh, and they biodegrade, users will be very happy to tell you.

Congratulations. They have found yet another way to take perfectly good organic materials and bury it among toxic filth, including all of our discarded cosmetics and drugs, and heavy metals, like lead and mercury, which make their way to landfills alongside all of these wonderfully biodegradable materials. And don’t forget that it is great!

Okay, enough with my sarcasm. But seriously, if it’s compostable, if it biodegrades, if, when mixed with worms and some excess fruit and vegetable peals, leaves, and other organic matter, you get usable soil within a few months, you’re wasting a precious resource by shipping it off to a landfill. All of these large businesses trying to green their images are quick to even spend a bit more for bamboo plates and starch flatware for their meetings, all of which can be–but normally isn’t–composted.

And this is a valuable resource all being squandered into a landfill of toxic waste. We ship lots of chemicals to landfills, that, given their collective toxicity, can render soil unusable for growing plants anytime in the near future.

Hands down, if people are going to use compostable materials, they might as well take the next step and participate in composting programs or make one to participate in on their own.

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