{"id":898,"date":"2015-10-05T09:04:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T08:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=898"},"modified":"2015-10-05T09:04:19","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T08:04:19","slug":"new-biodegradable-materials-could-replace-plastic-bags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/engineering-innovation\/new-biodegradable-materials-could-replace-plastic-bags\/","title":{"rendered":"New biodegradable materials could replace plastic bags"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While shoppers in England face a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/single-use-plastic-carrier-bags-why-were-introducing-the-charge\/single-use-plastic-carrier-bags-why-were-introducing-the-charge\">5p charge<\/a> for each plastic carrier bag they use from today (5th October 2015), OU research highlights work into alternative and more environmentally friendly materials that could potentially replace them.<\/p>\n<p>The OU\u2019s Integrated Waste Systems (IWS) research group is working on an ambitious partnership worth around \u00a3250,000 with a UK SME, funded by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to develop a new type of biodegradable single-use plastic carrier bag that is recyclable, biodegradable and will have no harmful effects on plants or animals.<\/p>\n<p>The new charge of 5p for carrier bags in England is designed to reduce the quantity of\u00a0plastic single-use carrier bags \u00a0\u2013 and the tonnes of litter associated with them \u2013 and encourage people to reuse bags. Dr Carl Boardman, the project\u2019s lead, says: \u201cCurrently in the UK we still dispose of the majority of the plastic products we use in landfill sites. The introduction of single-use carrier bag charge in England is a welcome development and follows the success of the policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland\u201d. The impact of the charge in Wales shows an 80% reduction in plastic bag consumption over the last three years.<\/p>\n<p>The UK Government is committed to investigating the possibility of making\u00a0biodegradable carrier bags exempt from the single-use charge in future. The results of this research and development are expected within the next year.<\/p>\n<p>In this video, Dr Carl Boardman, explains more about the research.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"New biodegradable materials could replace plastic bags\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LWenDQSvI84?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While shoppers in England face a 5p charge for each plastic carrier bag they use from today (5th October 2015), OU research highlights work into alternative and more environmentally friendly materials that could potentially replace them. The OU\u2019s Integrated Waste Systems (IWS) research group is working on an ambitious partnership worth around \u00a3250,000 with a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[43,373,385,815,1732,2388],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineering-innovation","tag-5p-charge","tag-carl-boardman","tag-carrier-bags","tag-environment","tag-plastic-bags","tag-waste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}