I read a really interesting article in August's issue of the Smithsonian called, "Corn Plastic to the Rescue," by Elizabeth Royte. I really didn't know much about corn plastic until I read this article. The article discussed the pros and cons. Corn plastic is essentially polylactic acid made from corn, which is obviously a renewable resource. This is a huge plus of corn plastic, as conventional plastic packaging uses 200,000 barrels of oil per day in the U.S. It sounds like our plastic bags and plastic packaging are akin to gas guzzling vehicles. WalMart alone could save 800,000 barrels per year of oil by utilizing corn plastic; it plans to use 114 million containers of corn plastic per year. Corn plastic also uses 65% less energy in its manufacturing than conventional plastics. The downside of corn plastic is that although it is touted as "compostable" and "biodegradable," home composting techniques really won't change it into a degraded form. Rather, corn plastic will degrade only when subjected for 10 days to temperatures of 140 degrees--which is really only done in industrial-type composting machines, many of which are not open to residential corn plastic. Also, if corn plastic is simply dumped in a landfill, it will pretty much sit there just like regular plastic does. Further, corn plastic cannot be recycled with other plastics (like PETs, used commonly for soda bottles) and as such, it can interfere with recycling practices.

The bottom line seems to be that if people are feeling good about corn plastic because they can throw it in their garbage can so that it will magically degrade into some organic plant food, they are deluding themselves. On the other hand, we should not be so quick to rule corn plastic out as a future leader in the world of plastics, as toxins are not used to make it and it produces 68% less greenhouse gases in manufacturing than do conventional plastics. In other words, it definitely alleviates some of the stress on fossil fuels and creates less air pollution, which are huge bonuses. What we need to do though, is move away from our disposable mentality and work on better ways to reuse the corn plastic and recycle it into other products so that there will not be so much in landfills.