Cucumbers, cow farts and the future of plastic

Meet a scientist designing the sustainable packaging of tomorrow.

Jan 18, 2023

Kia ora! Welcome back to Future Proof, brought to you by Electric Kiwi.

Over the summer break, I’ve been eating ice cream and thinking about ice cream tubs. My favourite brand of ice cream comes in those flexible, papery containers. They’re apparently “commercially compostable” – which sounds great… but how does the average Kiwi access a commercial composting facility, exactly? I can’t compost it at home and I can’t chuck it in the recycling. So where does it end up? Landfill.

Alec Foster understands my frustration, and says New Zealand needs to up its game when it comes to the whole life cycle of packaging – from manufacture to end-of-life disposal. Foster is the lead scientist for bioproducts and packaging at Scion Research, where researchers are designing sustainable packaging solutions.

There’s still a role for plastic

Plastic is still useful in some contexts – for example, consider the cucumber. Think of all the carbon that’s required to grow the cucumber from a tiny seed. Wasting just one cucumber is equivalent to the carbon of wrapping 83 cucumbers in plastic, Foster explains. So it’s better to use a bit of plastic to extend the shelf life of the cucumber three or fourfold.

But the difference is, in future this cucumber wrap will be bioplastic, instead of derived from planet-heating fossil fuels. Bioplastics are produced using fermentation of a range of different “feedstocks”, such as plant starches, dairy waste or even methane. “Our primary industries produce a lot of different types of waste that we could quite easily convert into packaging solutions,” says Foster. At Scion, they’re working on using methane to make a type of bioplastic called PHA. I tell Foster I’m imagining cows wearing balloon contraptions to capture their farts to make plastic. “Well, as funny as it sounds, one of my scientists proposed something not too dissimilar to that,” he replies.

Bioplastics can be composted, and some can be recycled with the right infrastructure. Scientists are figuring out ways to make bioplastics stronger and more heat resistant too. But right now, the biggest challenge for bioplastics is price – they’re usually twice as much as an oil-based plastic. “That's why we're looking at these cheaper waste streams,” says Foster.

Biodegradable vs compostable

So what does compostable actually mean? A compostable plastic will break down into carbon dioxide over time – and this is something Scion tests at its purpose-built composting facility, to check claims made by packaging manufacturers are legit. Compostable is different to “biodegradable” – a vague term Foster says is often used to greenwash. “It just means it breaks down, but it could break down into microplastics,” he says.

The Scion packaging team have recently developed a fully compostable plant pot. “Upon planting, the pot starts breaking down into carbon dioxide. Within 12 months it’s fully composted,” says Foster. It may seem minor, but people don’t really know what to do with conventional plastic plant pots. They can’t be recycled because they’re too contaminated.

The truth about recycling

"Most people think when they put their things into the recycling bin, most of it ends up getting recycled,” says Foster. “The truth is, it's only a small fraction.” Globally, less than 10% of plastic ever produced has been recycled. Of the 17.5 million tonnes of waste Kiwis produce each year, about 70% heads to landfill.

The system needs to change, and Foster would love to see New Zealand shift towards a circular bioeconomy, rather than the linear “take, make, waste” system we’ve currently got. “New Zealand should be generating the feedstocks, generating the bioplastics, and generating products with suitable end-of-life solutions,” he says.

Here’s to cucumbers with long shelf lives, cow-fart plastics, and ice cream tubs I can one day put in the kerbside compost bin.

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