Biodegradable Fork

The manufacturers of this biodegradable cutlery don’t say exactly how it is made, but it is likely that it has been injection moulded from a thermoplastic starch or cellulose base mixed with a polymer derived from either fossil fuels or biofuels.

All plastics are biodegradable, given enough time. In order to be classified as compostable, plastics have to biodegrade within a strict and standardised time frame, but materials producers and waste managers are still struggling to define a time frame for biodegradability. As such, it means very little to simply state that a material is ‘biodegradable’ without specifying the precise conditions required for its biodegradation. The producer of this biodegradable fork state that their products are biodegradable through composting; some have to be domestically composted, and others will biodegrade in the soil.

These sorts of technologies have been developed to try and deal with the very dispersed and visible problem of plastic waste in the sea and littered across the landscape. They are not always effective, since these biodegradable materials often end up in landfill, where biodegradation is largely anaerobic, and plastics that do break down in these conditions form methane gas. Ideally, these plastics would be fished out of the waste stream and composted at home. This is not made easy by the fact that the fork has no markings on it to show that it is biodegradable or compostable.