Not my bag

Non-plastic picnicking

• Chris Jeavans
• 18 Aug 08, 12:16 PM GMT

Avoiding plastic is all very well when it just impacts on my own choices but trying to keep it up in company is more difficult.

Some friends organised a picnic on Saturday which was lovely - we even had sunny weather.

I had made sure that the food we contributed was plastic-free: two pizzas from a bakery, paper bags of cherries and tomatoes, a wax-wrapped cheese and drinks in glass bottles.

But I fell down on the receptacles: I forgot to bring any cups and our hosts had plastic disposable ones. I didn't even realise what I was doing until half way through the first "glass" and I wasn't going to be so churlish as to protest.

Everyone had metal cutlery and paper plates so we were "safe" on that score.

There are, however, many other non-plastic options for disposable tableware.

Plates can be made from bamboo, cassava starch, reed starch or bagasse - the waste fibre from pressing sugar cane.

Wooden cutlery is available as well as bio-plastic versions made from corn or potato starch mixed with vegetable oil.

The manufacturers claim that their products are compostable or biodegradable under the right conditions.

However, as with all biodegradable products, the challenge is ensuring they end up in a composter (whether home or large scale) or anaerobic digester rather than landfill.

When biodegradable matter breaks down in the low oxygen environment of a landfill site it creates the powerful greenhouse gas, methane.

Some of the methane is captured by a system of pipes and can be used as fuel but the rest escapes into the air.

Latest government estimates (2007 provisional) put the amount of methane emissions from UK landfill at 0.96 million tonnes, 41% of the UK total of 2.3 million tonnes.

In an anaerobic digester the same biodegradation process occurs but because it is a closed unit, all the biogas (methane and carbon dioxide) can be trapped and used for energy.

Composting works aerobically and so does not create methane.

But Friends of the Earth's senior waste campaigner Mike Warhurst warns against assuming that just because something is bio-degradable it's "greener".

"I'm seeing a lot of confusion happening where people are using disposable items and then implying that they're good because they're biodegradable.

"Whatever it is it required energy to make it. So if you're in a café, you're far better off having a cup which is washed up than having so-called biodegradable cups.

"There's not much point in stuff being biodegradable if it goes in your normal rubbish bin and ends up in landfill or in an incinerator."

Which is also where that non-biodegradable plastic cup I used at the picnic is destined.