In recent years, products like Tide pods and detergent sheets have taken off. Over 25% of Americans have switched to them since they came on the market more than a decade ago.
For some, it was because of the 'green’ label.
Alexa McGovern is a breast cancer survivor and new mother, and said she was looking for ways to remove environmental toxins, including plastics, from her home. She used laundry pods for a long time because of the eco-friendly pitch: cleaner, less water.
“They came in a cardboard box, and they marketed the less plastic piece and all of that,” she said. “I liked the format, it was super easy.”
But according to research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, pods may not be biodegradable, green, nor clean. That’s because they’re coated with polyvinyl alcohol, a type of soft plastic. And while it breaks down in water, researchers and environmental advocates said that doesn’t necessarily mean it disappears.
“Very strict conditions are needed for this to biodegrade. Now, biodegradable is a really loaded word these days,” said Shaw Institute Executive Director Charles Rolsky. “Technically, if you expand it between now and a million years from now, pretty much anything is biodegradable.”
Rolsky and co-author Varun Kelkar were commissioned by Blueland, a sustainable cleaning company, to test whether PVA soft plastics truly biodegrade. They found that PVAs would only break down properly under perfect lab conditions.
“If it is stable, yes, much of this material can degrade,” Rolsky said. “The problem is that nothing in the environment is stable, even looking at morning to night.”
Rolsky said roughly 75% of the material, which had dissolved into particles smaller than nanoplastic, is making its way into the environment.
Their paper landed them in a firestorm: two scientists, one with the American Cleaning Institute , which represents companies like Unilever, wrote to the journal disputing the paper and asking for its removal.
“It turned into this massive attack,” Rolsky said.
The journal called in an independent researcher, who eventually validated the study, and the challengers withdrew the request.
Still, the Environmental Protection Agency questions Rolsky’s research. It said the paper makes assumptions about how the PVAs break down in wastewater treatment plants. And the agency recently declined a petition—which cited Rolsky’s paper—asking it to remove PVAs from its ' Safer Choice Chemicals’ list.
McGovern said whether or not PVAs are proven to be safe, or biodegradable, she believes there’s no need for them to be in household laundry products.
“It’s like, if you were driving an armored vehicle to the grocery store and you just need to take your sedan. You don’t need polyvinyl alcohol or plastic in a laundry pod, in a situation in which it just needs to go back into being water,” she said.
And McGovern thinks she may have a solution: replacing the water-soluble plastic with a plastic alternative made of kelp, a type of algae that grows in the ocean. She founded Dirigo Sea Farms a year ago to develop the kelp bio-refining process, and is working on a patent.
Their small lab space up in Blue Hill is filled with the briny smell of seaweed. Lab assistant Jack Tennant said the process involves turning the rubbery kelp into a plastic-like film.
“Essentially, what we’re trying to do is take out what makes kelp kind of goopy, kind of mucousy, that’s algenic acid, and that is what we’re trying to use to make the film,” he said.
The kelp bioplastic is sent to manufacturers in reams that resemble paper. And McGovern said that step could one day be done in Maine using established technology.
“The slurry we’re creating is similar to that of paper milling, and so being able to take that slurry and create sheets of paper is similar to what we’re taking an algae slurry and then creating sheets of film,” she said.
“And with Maine there’s a lot of old infrastructure from the paper industry. A lot of that machinery can be applied to our process here,” Tennant added.
The key will be to ensure the kelp alternative is resistant to temperature changes while shipping, and has a solid shelf life.
McGovern sources kelp from all over Maine through Atlantic Sea Farms, one of the biggest kelp companies in the country. But, if successful, the new bioplastic would likely create a demand that outpaces what Maine kelp growers can produce.
As much as 5 million pounds of kelp would be needed to replace about 72,000 pounds of PVA plastic — the average bulk order for a batch of pods from a bigger company, like Seventh Generation.
If her demand exceeds Maine’s supply, she’ll look to Alaska and Iceland for sustainable sources of kelp.
If all goes to plan, Dirigo Sea Farms’ first batch of 10,000 kelp-based laundry pods will be ready for online sales by next spring.
Maine Public’s Climate Desk is made possible by Androscoggin bank, with additional support from Evergreen Home Performance, Bigelow Laboratory, & Lee Auto Malls.
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