While responsibly sourced plastic such as post-consumer HDPE and PET bottles serves as foundations for recycled raw materials, one disturbing fact remains: reprocessor manufacturing capacity is too low to properly recycle all the world’s post-consumer plastic.
It’s estimated that in 2021 alone, manufacturers produced over 500 billion single-use water bottles—and that’s just single use water bottles! Even more frightening are the twin facts that only 10% of all post-consumer plastic gets recycled, and some types of plastic applications, like cutlery, cups, and, most notoriously, straws, almost never get recycled.
However, one 21st-century technological innovation has shown proven abilities to completely eradicate plastic straws from the face of the Earth. This savior material is Lastic’s biodegradable compound resin, made from a combination of biodegradable and compostable materials, including bamboo. The resin has extrusion and injection grade properties similar to both polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Island Leaf Commodities is humbled and ecstatic to be Lastic’s mandated sales agent for the North American Region. Lastic Bamboo Resin is made in Taiwan.
One of the main challenges facing Lastic and Island Leaf is spreading the word about Lastic Bamboo Resin. Most people we’ve encountered don’t even know such a material exists. Just pertaining to straws, many believe that prone-to-waterlogging and awful-feeling paper straws, sloppy-sippy cups (that do no favors to the whiteness of one's teeth), or frail bamboo/fiber-cutaway straws are the only ecologically-friendly, albeit user-unfriendly, options for plastic-straw replacements. Herein lies the opportunity for Island Leaf to educate the public about Lastic’s products and potential.
Our educational conduit is The Bamboo Press, a short-form blog published weekly on the Island Leaf website. We’ll devote several entries to describing what makes Lastic Biodegradable Resin truly a one-of-a-kind biopolymer, and illustrate what separates Lastic Bamboo Resin from current “biodegradable” plastics like PLA. We’ll also describe the ever-growing-certification stack that Lastic started to acquire just last year. And, we’ll write about current projects underway, as well as capacity growth. Finally, keeping the kids in the back of the class in mind, we'll make sure each entry is under 500 words.
Our overall goals are to raise awareness about Lastic, grow the Lastic client base, and create a significant following of enthusiastic-Lastic aficionados! Follow us on LinkedIn to stay in the loop about all Bamboo Press releases.
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