Biobags and Other Garbage Bags that Biodegrade with Their Contents

"Are you saving your trash for eternity?" asks the ad for buygreensavvy.com, an online source of biodegradable and compostable garbage bags. If your answer is no, here are some ideas for bags which might better match your green lifestyle than regular plastic bags. They still have strength, but they don't overstay their welcome.

If you've ever seen a display of landfill material showing how little breaks down over time, you can see that the layers of eternal plastic film that were garbage bags are not only clogging the soil, but encasing other material and interfering with the process of natural breakdown. Buying biodegradable trash bags helps trash disposal, but it can also be a big plus in your own green household.

Biodegradable bags are listed as 'will biodegrade in a landfill environment', while 'compostable bags' can dissolve over several days in the compost heap. Companies that sell both claim that their strength is on a par with regular store bought plastic bags, so they can be used for the same purposes. In my experience, that has been the case! The materials they use to create these bags include corn and other renewable resources.

One of the best ideas I've found for biodegradable bags is little dog waste bags that will disappear over time, so you can just throw the whole thing out and know it will return to nature. A box of 50 is available from buygreensavvy.com for $4.99.

Kitchen trash bags are available from buygreensavvy.com at 15/3.13 for biodegradable Natural Value brand, and the popular Biobag compostable brand is 12/5.29. If you separate your compostable trash, food scraps and the like, you can use a compostable bag and avoid the mess of dumping into the composter, just put the whole thing in.

Ecoproducts.com sells Biobag 45 gallon lawn/leaf bags in a roll of 16 for $17.86, with much larger quantities available on their website. Once again, you don't have to mess with the bags when you compost your leaves in the fall, the bags will join the leaves in the nice, rich soil over time.

If you are looking for a garden liner while you are starting seedlings in the spring, biodegradable and compostable bags may be just what you're looking for. No more scraps of plastic all over the garden in the fall!

If you are shopping locally and want to be sure that you are getting biodegradable bags, look for the standards mark 'ASTM 6400', which bag makers have been using to note that their bags meet the appropriate standards. Prices mentioned above are subject to change, of course, and should be verified.

www.buygreensavvy.com

www.biobagusa.com (list of retailers who sell their product)

ecoproductsecoproducts.com