Since the implementing of the Shanghai Municipal Domestic Garbage Management Regulations, many citizens complain that they may dirty their hands while breaking bags containing wet garbage. And even sometimes, there is garbage splash on their clothes, which makes them very discommodious as they will have to go to work after dropping garbage. Can we use degradable bags to hold garbage so that we can drop them directly without breaking?

      In this regard, the municipal green and appearance bureau has made a detailed explanation: compared with ordinary plastic bags, the main difference is that degradable bags do not contain PE, which is the components of ordinary garbage bags, and they are mainly comes from lignin extracted from straw and biodegradable plastics.

However, degradable plastic bags need strict conditions (water, temperature, reactor, etc.) to complete degradation process.

According to relevant research, when the pH of gradable plastic bags is between 1-2 (strong acid) or 11-13 (strong base), it will take 1-2 months for the molecular chain to break (i.e. complete degradation).

However, the whole treatment cycle from beginning to the end of the recycling plant of wet waste in this city is usually based on days.Therefore, when citizens buy degradable garbage bags for wet garbage disposal, since the degradation cycle of plastic bags is much longer than that of wet garbage disposal, these degradable plastic bags are transported to the wet garbage terminal treatment facility without completing the degradation.Mixed with plastic bags , wet waste is bound to bring adverse effects to the utilization of wet waste resources.

Therefore, the municipal green and appearance bureau thinks that it is not feasible to use gradable plastic bags instead of broken bags in the current technical conditions.