FARM SHARE CUSTOMERS THANK YOU!
BECAUSE OF YOUR PARTICIPATION
7,500 PLASTIC BAGS HAVE NOT ENTERED THE WORLD.
We want to extend our profound thanks to our farm-share customers for helping us fulfill our goal of farming in a way that is healthy for consumers, farmers, and our irreplaceable earth. Here’s the background.
For years, we were concerned about the amount of plastic packing material we used in our CSA. In January and February of 2019, we set a goal to move away from plastic packaging for all our products but were particularly concerned about what to do with our tender greenS. We read numerous articles and talked with specialists at NC State University about packing materials. This revealed that it is important to avoid items labeled biodegradable but not compostable, because biodegradable can mean the material is a composite of plastic and plant material. The plant material degrades in sunlight, but tiny pieces of plastic remain. To protect the environment, we needed materials that are ultimately broken down into water and CO2 by bacteria, that is, we needed something bacteria can consume in its entirety.
There are plastic bags that are certified-compostable; however, there is a catch. These bags are guaranteed compostable at industrial composting facilities. They cannot be put into the waste stream that ends at the landfill because they will end up in an anaerobic environment, (read no bacteria operating). For them to breakdown, certified-compostable must enter a waste stream that ends at an industrial composting facility.
These biobags, as they are called, are broken down by thermophilic bacteria, i.e., bacteria that thrive at temperatures 120-140 degrees Fahrenheit. We tried composting biobags on our farm and monitoring the time and temperature of the pile. We were only able to get the temperature up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit on a cold day and abandoned this approach. We contacted a local industrial composting facility, and they would not take them.
Then we discovered glassine bags. They are made of polished paper, are translucent (important for farmer’s market display), are recyclable, biodegradable, and compostable in a home compost pile. And they kept the small greens hydrated long enough to make the trip from farm to home, where the glassine bag can be slipped into a reusable plastic bag for storage in the refrigerator.
PS. The calculation is based on the revenue by product report we get from our Harvie program. I estimate that, by the end of the season, we will have used some 11,500 small bags to package your produce and will have avoided using some 7,500 plastic bags. The two figures are not equal because we always used paper bags for potatoes, tomatoes, tomatillos, and squash.
