Walmart Goes Green(er) with Bio Plastic Containers

walmartplastic.jpgWalmart’s grocery department will soon begin switching from petroleum based plastic clamshells to corn-based packaging. The potentially revolutionary news replaces an astonishing 114 Million plastic containers.
Despite my generally poor feelings about Walmart, I’m pretty impressed – the potential impact on the bio plastics imdustry is enormous, as if McDonalds suddenly went all-organic.
That said, high petroleum prices undoubtedly played as much a roll in their decision as anything else. Furthermore, as pointed out on Treehugger, bio-plastics are often derived from genetically modified crops, and I have also seen reports that some bio-plastics (ironically) use as much fossil fuel as regular plastic due to the use of petroleum based fertilizers. But why look a gift horse in the mouth? Bravo Walmart. (via Treehugger)




4 responses

  1. Are there any studies as to what chemicals are released when mass amounts of bio-plastic decomposes? In terms of crude oil, I read that plastic only constitutes .002% of the overall consumption of oil in the US, hardly anything to brag about…Does this mean that we’ll be able to stop massively subsidizing our farming industry because now they’ll have a product that we’ll be heavily dependent on? Does bacteria grow more or less on bio-plastic than on regular plastic? I’m interested in the answers

  2. I work for a bioplastic company as a product development assistant, and walmart is looking at several companies for suppliers. having just one companie would be impossible for any company to deliver the sizes shapes and types of plastic contaners needed. And as an after thought, Walmart is Interested in PLA bio plastic, Which is made up of the lactid acid from corn.


Comments are closed.