Since early May of this year, the Island Leaf team has examined and discussed the virtues, technicalities, and unique features that Lastic Bamboo Resin and its products exude. A recurring content-creation theme is biodegradation. Naturally, this theme continually recurs due to Lastic Bamboo Resin's hard-hitting biodegradation certificates, namely DIN CERTCO's Home and Garden Compostability Certification and BPI's Commercially Compostable Certification.
Because many aren't familiar with commercial composting's operations and intricacies, we dedicated a few content posts to it. Now, it's time to get technical. For 2022's final edition of The Bamboo Press, we will delve into how nature transforms Lastic products into soil vitalizers. We're discussing biodegradation.
In The Bamboo Press #22, the first of a two-part series explaining commercial composting, we hashed out the difference between two concepts used in our space: biodegradation and compostability. We concluded that all products, whether their composition is of bamboo, steel, stone, or hydrocarbon, eventually biodegrade. Products are only compostable, however, if they biodegrade in a few months. Thus, compostability is fast biodegradation.
Biodegradation is ultimately a chemical process. When it occurs, the molecules that compose an object break down into simpler molecules. It's easy to liken this to hydrogen and oxygen gas production from water. For example, when one runs an electrical current through water, the bonds binding hydrogen atoms to water molecules break. In this case, the electric current is known as the catalyst (the variable responsible for the chemical change of the original molecule or substance). The catalyst (electric current) produces gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, the two building blocks of water.
The natural biodegradation of a banana peel, leaf, or Lastic straw involves more catalysts than producing oxygen and hydrogen gas does. However, the outcome is similar because the original organic substance breaks into several molecules. So just how exactly does biodegradation occur?
Three catalysts affect biodegradation's speed and efficiency:
· Soil organisms (bacteria, protists, fungi, earthworms, and other insects)
· The physical environment (temperature, soil conditions)
· The quality of the biodegrading object (Lastic straw, banana peel)
Conditions in home and garden and industrial composting settings are more optimal than those in landfills or even the natural environment. This is because humans manipulate the physical environment by contributing only high-quality, organic material. Thus, soil organisms, like aerobic bacteria and protists, run nucleus-over-flagella from the surrounding environment into composting schemes, which are eternal buffets to our short-life-spanned, single-celled friends.
Most commercial composters and many home and garden composters aerate their compost piles. Doing this provides oxygen to the microorganisms deep inside the piles and away from the air. More oxygen allows the organisms to thrive, as they are "aerobic," meaning "oxygen-loving."
Additionally, when composting piles accumulate material, the mass's inner temperature rises. The resulting warmer environment propels microorganism growth and accommodates more complex organisms: insects like earthworms, grubs, and beetles. Like microorganisms, these insects eat and metabolize all the organic matter in the compost pile. After the organisms eat a compost pile's components, carbon dioxide, water, and various nitrates remain in the soil. Like the electrical current in the above example, microorganisms and insects catalyze biodegradation. In about six months, the bottom of the pile transforms into compost. People use this thick, black, nutrient-rich stuff for their gardens and landscapes or, in commercial composting, as their business model's profit maker.
So, it's crucial to realize that the quality of the items going into a composting scheme makes a huge difference. Wood, bone, and PLA products will not wholly biodegrade in most composting schemes. However, since Lastic products have been awarded home and garden compostability and commercial compostability certificates, they rank amongst banana peels and sweet potato skins in composting viability. And, because plant-based Lastic products come from the soil, using and composting them contributes to a closed-loop economy.
We're aiming to publish more information about commercial composting throughout 2023! Keep your server dialed into www.islandleaf.co/blog.
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