As the world is facing a major crisis in terms of garbage disposal and waste management, the world and Sri Lanka in particular is now looking for ways to find solutions to this mess. The government has at last taken a serious decision on the segregation of garbage and is going all out to find long term, viable solutions.
It is in this backdrop that a Sri Lankan company – Plastic Pakaging Pte Ltd headed by its Chairman Mervyn Dias PhD, has been exporting Compostable bags to the UK and Maldivian markets. The 100% locally owned company is starting to supply to the French market early next year. It also caters to the domestic market as per requests from leading companies.
“In Sri Lanka garbage is now being collected separately, but collectors refuse to accept food waste packed in any type of polythene bags. When the food waste is collected after three days without any packaging, the smell of putrefied food is unbearable. The usual non degradable bag takes more than 500 years to degrade and therefore a compostable bag is used in other countries such as the UK, Australia and EU. The cost of handling food waste is cheaper as the weight of the bag becomes less each day,” says Mervyn Dias adding that organic “waste” is considered a resource that could be separated from landfill bound waste and delivered to compost facilities.
In Europe, municipalities collect food scrap using of compostable liners achieving the highest organic capture rates possible. Compostable liners can be used to collect food scraps and food waste in Sri Lanka as well.
PPP which has been exporting polythene bags to UK for the last 30 years, introduced Oxo- Biodegradable bags around 10 years ago and thereafter introduced Compostable & Biodegradable bags to the UK market . These bags get composted within a short period of 180 days and confirm to EN 13432 standards. PPP is in the process of designing a green food waste collection bag which will be introduced soon. It is a printed bag that can be used to collect food waste at home and compost it with the bag.
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