What is Biodegradable?

What is Biodegradable?

The dictionary meaning for Biodegradable is ” any substance capable of being decomposed by bacteria or other living organisms and thereby avoiding pollution”

So now that we know what Biodegradeable is, let us see why this is suddenly become so talked about and why people wants to get into this band wagon.

Around the 1950 and 1960 is when plastics has started to become popular. In those days we did not think much about plastic being biodegradable, we just thought about all the convenience we had with plastic and there was soon a lot of demand for plastic and ever since we have seen millions of products being made out of plastic. In fact it is not only the plastics that are harmful to our environment. Cutting down of trees, over population and various types of pollution also contribute to the environmental issues that we see today.

How does these non biodegradable materials impact our environment

1. Time taken to break down

The time taken for the plastics, that we use, to break down is around 400 to 500 years. This makes the land very toxic and eventually may not even be good to cultivate any food.

2. Air Pollution

The fumes that get released when the non biodegradable products are burnt is one of the reason for the Air pollution. The other most common one is the burning of trees in the forests. It is harmful for humans to breath these toxic fumes.

3. Water Contamination

The plastics get thrown around and it lands up in the water bodies from where we humans extract water. As mentioned above, these make the land very toxic and it seeps into the earth thereby contaminating even the ground water.

All the above mentioned reasons, impacts our food cultivation there by even making some of the species extinct.