An article on the Business Daily Africa website describes how a new plastic bag from the agricultural technology firm Amiran is poised to resolve one of the most persistent problems afflicting Kenyan farmers, and a problem that causes them to lose billions of shillings every year.

A new polyethylene bag helps Kenyan farmers keep produce fresh longer. (Photo – IFDC Photography)

The Kenyan Farmers suffer economic losses due to being unable to preserve the freshness of produce beginning immediately after it is harvested. As a result, they often are forced to discard spoiled fruits and vegetables or to sell those on the verge of spoiling to middlemen at a significant loss. Lack of transportation and refrigeration infrastructure is largely to blame, and this problem is common to farmers in many emerging economies around the world.

Omry Karplus, the field operations manager for Amiran Kenya, makes it clear that the value of the Active Bag his company offers is due to the nature of the plastics film. “It looks like any other polythene material, but this is no ordinary plastic bag. It is special, and in a way revolutionary, because it changes the way farmers store their produce and saves them money,” he says.

Polythene is a British word for polyethylene, and as Karplus makes clear, this is no ordinary polyethylene. The bags can preserve fresh produce for up to a month after harvest, he says, because the film controls exchange of gases such as oxygen, carbon dioxide, and ethylene through the bag walls. Too much or not enough of those gases, depending on which gas it is, accelerates spoilage.

Amiran put the bags through a series of tests prior to launching, and according to Karplus the company is confident that the bags provide optimal levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide and ethylene. And they do more than that.

Because different types of produce require different storage temperatures to retain flavor, freshness, and appearance, Amiran has made bags with different levels of porosity. The bags are available with capacities of 0.5 kg to 20 kg (1.1 lb to 44 lb) and cost as little as 48 Kenyan shillings ($0.57). Adding to their value, Active Bags can be reused up to four times.

The Flexible Packaging Association(FPA) has given an FPA 2012 Achievement Award to plastic bag maker and recycler Hilex Poly Co. of Hartsville, SC for implementing Hilex’s Bag-2-Bag closed-loop recycling program with Kroger Company’s supermarkets.

Hilex Poly's Bag-2-Bag product line has won a Flexible Packaging Association Award for Sustainability and Environmental Achievement for its use by Kroger supermarkets.

The majority of the FPA awards honor a specific package, focusing on its printing, design, technical achievement or overall excellence. Hilex Poly’s award, however, is specifically for sustainability and environmental achievement, with the reasons clearly noted. Compared to conventional bags, the Bag-2-Bag requires 20 percent less energy to produce, lowers carbon emissions by 11 percent, diverts millions of pounds from landfills each year, and provides sustainability-conscious consumers a closed loop carryout package.

The retail bags are made using material recycled from plastic bags and other film that shoppers drop into Hilex Poly containers at retail stores such as Kroger’s. It has become very easy for consumers to recycle their bags properly thanks to the closed loop system set up by Hilex Poly.

Hilex Poly is a founding member of Progressive Bag Affiliates, which defends plastic bags and promotes recycling of all plastics film, including bags, and that as of January 1, 2012 has transitioned from the American Chemistry Council to SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association, where it will be known as the American Progressive Bag Alliance (ABPA).

With over 30,000 collection points across the country, mostly at retail stores such as Kroger’s supermarkets, Hilex Poly collects many plastic film products, which in turn are recycle into new bags, and into decking, piping, and playground equipment. As consumers have discovered the ease of using this system, Hilex’s recycling volume has increased by 50% over the last five years. Having invested tens of millions of dollars into its recycling facilities, Hilex Poly was able to recycle more than 20 million pounds of plastic film in last year.

Will the fungus discovered in the Amazon by a Yale University research group, and brought back to the school’s labs, where it showed it could consume polyurethane material, eventually dissolve all the plastics products foolishly thrown into landfills?

It’s far too soon to know, but the high activity currently on the Internet, might suggest ‘eventually’ is a short period of time. Terry Peters, SPI’s Senior Director of Technical & Industry affairs, found an article about the fungus at FastCoExist.com, a website of Fast Company magazine, under this headline:

“Fungi Discovered In The Amazon Will Eat Your Plastic”

Even though there are no exclamation points, maybe we should heed Peters’ advice: “Careful with those toys,” he says. Of course he’s joking, but let’s hope it isn’t repeated. We could have a panic, or if it’s true, no traffic on the Internet.

Pestalotiopsis-microspora, a newly-found fungus, degrades polyurethane in an anaerobic environment

The eco-bloggers recently demonstrated how quickly they can spread the word, for better or worse. A Google search on February 8^th for “Pestalotiopsis microspora plastic,” the name of the fungus, brought back 4830 results, many of them recent. Oops, the discovery was announced by Yale at the beginning of August, 2011.

A scientific paper “Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi” that appeared in the September 2011 issue of Applied Environmental Microbiology says several dozen endophytic (lives inside a plant) fungi were screened for their ability to degrade PUR. A number of them could, but two of them could use PUR as their sole carbon source under aerobic and, uniquely, under anaerobic conditions.

The inside of a landfill is an anaerobic environment, which may have sparked the idea that the newly discovered fungus could break down polyurethane entombed under other garbage, and if it could do that, it might also extract the carbon from other plastics in the heap.

The recently discovered Amazonian fungus has no trouble consuming polyurethane, even without oxygen.

Jonathan Russell, the Yale student who first saw that the fungus had consumed the polyurethane, expressed caution. “I don’t want it to be broadcast as the cure-all to pollution,” he told CNN, “but it’s a modest step towards a very important goal.”

Ming Tien, a Penn State biochemist who had experimented with fungi for decomposition, concurred, saying, “The question of whether these microbes can be used in the future is an engineering challenge. It’s a big leap to go from the test tube to the field.”

Back at the Yale labs, the work continues. According to Yale biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, one student is trying to find an organism that will biodegrade expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) and others are interested in finding more solutions similar to the fungus that eats polyurethane.

Promising as this research is, recycling remains the optimum solution for used plastic products in the foreseeable future. Keeping them out of landfills — garbage dumps as they long were known — is the first step in making that happen.

Let’s talk about Silly Putty, the stretchy, bouncy stuff in the plastic egg. Popular for more than 60 years, enshrined in museums, and loved by kids (of all ages), Silly Putty is nothing less than amazing. Yet this toy is simply a wad of unformed plastic material, not molded or formed in any way. More mazing still is how this enduring success came to be?

Silicone-based Silly Putty has been packaged in a rigid plastic egg since first marketed in 1950.

Early in World War II, Japan controlled much of the area where natural rubber originates. The call went out to American scientists: Develop a synthetic substitute. James Wright, an engineer experimenting in General Electric’s New Haven, CT lab, combined boric acid and silicone oil in a test tube, which yielded a gooey substance. He threw it on the floor and it bounced — very high.

This was not the sought-for synthetic rubber, but it was interesting. Yet despite GE’s efforts, no practical use was found for “bouncing putty.” Eventually, a toy store owner in New Haven, CT noticed it. Ruth Fallgatter and her marketing consultant Peter Hodgson put a written description into her toy catalog offering bouncing putty in a clear case for $2. It outsold everything in the catalog except for a 50-cent box of Crayola crayons.

Fallgatter lost interest but Hodgson saw potential. Already deeply in debt, he borrowed $147 to make a batch, packaged one-ounce wads in plastic eggs, priced them at $1 each, and decided on the name Silly Putty.

At the 1950 International Toy Fair in New York the toy marketers were generally negative about the putty, but Hodgson persisted and placed it with a few retail outlets, including Neiman-Marcus and Doubleday book shops.

Sculpting is one of many uses for Silly Putty

A few months later, a New Yorker magazine writer found it in Doubleday, wrote a story about it, and Hodgson got orders for more than 250,000 eggs of Silly Putty. Government restrictions on silicone due to the Korean War almost wiped him out, but those were lifted and by 1955 Silly Putty was popular with kids aged six to twelve.

Silly Putty scored a big hit at the 1961 U.S. Plastics Expo in Moscow, becoming the gift of choice for Americans visiting the Soviet Union. In 1968 Silly Putty went to the moon, literally. The Apollo 8 astronauts used it to secure tools and relieve boredom.

Peter Hodgson died in 1976, leaving an estate reported to be about $140 million. In 1977, Binney & Smith, the maker of Crayola crayons and other products, acquired the rights to Silly Putty and the putty has continued to bounce along since then.

Glow-in-the-dark Silly Putty plays like the original. They all do.

In 2000, a Silly Putty egg from the 1950s was displayed in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, part of the “Material World” exhibit of inventions and materials that have shaped American culture. The following year, Silly Putty was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame (Salem, OR), joining Crayola crayons, inducted three years prior.

Binney & Smith produces more than 20,000 eggs full of Silly Putty every day at its Easton, PA factory. There are versions that glow in the dark and others that change color in your hand, but 60 years after it hit the market, you can still bounce Silly Putty higher than a rubber ball, copy pictures onto it from a newspaper, shape it into fancy sculpture, smack it with a hammer (mind the bounce-back), or squeeze it to relieve tension or strengthen your grip.

A walk through the toy aisle of any store shows that a significant majority of children’s toys are made mostly or entirely of plastics. Silly Putty, however, is still its own category: a chunk of plastic material whose only moving part is the kid playing with it.

On Tuesdays you can find Wilma Groh, along with a group of family and friends, in the Cali

Made of 400 plastic grocery bags, this mat gives a homeless person a place to sleep.

Comfort Restaurant and Sports Bar in Spring Valley, CA, which is inland from San Diego. They are not there to party, though. They are there to weave sleeping mats for homeless people. But what they are weaving is plastic – used plastic grocery bags to be precise.

When people first see the mats they usually ask some variation of the same question: “That’s plastic?” Yes it is. The plastic bags are cut into loops about one to two inches wide. The loops then are tied together end to end, forming a type of yarn that Groh and her colleagues have named “plarn” for plastic yarn. The plarn is rolled into a ball and woven by hand to make the mats. Weaving, says Groh, is weaving, even if it is done with plastic.

The project got rolling in May of 2010 when Groh’s daughter showed her mother what she had found on line: a youth project weaving plastic.

Wilma Groh's hat is woven of plastic bags.

Groh, who is 89 years old and lives in the Monterrey Trellis Retirement Home close behind the restaurant, had always done weaving, crocheting, sewing and such, and was immediately interested.

Now, however, she does the work primarily by touch. Blind in one eye and having a degenerative condition in the other, she can see only blurry shapes and colors, which has not slowed her down even slightly. The group has woven more than 75 mats, and has expanded into making purses, hats, tote bags, coasters, ornaments, and more.

Bracelets and other items also are woven from plastic bags.

They sell the woven plastic items at craft shows and other events, with the proceeds going to a branch of San Diego Youth Services that works to get teens off the streets. Production material, meaning used plastic bags, has not been hard to come by, says Groh. They have over 20,000 bags on hand, from a variety of friendly sources.

Group members say what they are doing is very satisfying. Not only are they helping the homeless people, but they also are helping recycle the bags, and that keeps them out of landfills. It takes about 400 bags to make each mat. If it were laid out in a straight line, the yarn, make that plarn, would go almost ten miles.