Degradable plastics! Environmentally Friendly! Haven’t we heard this before? Let me ask you, do you truly believe that such plastics exist? I do not know about you, but let me tell you that I surely did not believe it when this idea was first presented to me two years ago. What has happened in the last two years that changed me from a no believer to a public supporter? How did I end up in front of this audience to talk about degradable plastics and convince you of how good they really are?

The idea of a biodegradable diaper is not new. Some of you in the audience, especially those who have been in the industry for some time, may remember what happened at the beginning of last decade. At that time, some disposable baby diapers were advertised to be "environmentally friendly", but were not able to live up to the biodegradable promise when asked for supporting evidence. Even today, there are still some diapers produced in the European market, which continue to use that same old technology that failed years ago in the US. Of course I am referring to the use of films composed of a starch/PE blend. The starch is mixed with the plastic pellets and then melted in the extrusion process to produce a starch-polyethylene film. Everybody knows that starch is biodegradable, this is unquestionable, the problem was that given enough time, starch/PE films resulted in fragments that did not change any more. As a matter of fact, the resultant fragments did not biodegrade. To make it worst, it was argued, but finally accepted, that the life cycle of a typical US diaper ends in the landfill. Under landfill conditions, the diaper with the film composed of a starch-PE blend failed to deliver its promise; it just did not biodegrade.

We all have heard of biodegradable plastics made from natural components or their derivatives; these products are currently available. We all know however that such products are extremely expensive, and definitely not practical for use in a disposable baby diaper. In addition, their properties (strength, coefficient of friction, pinhole resistance, etc) are very different than the ones we are accustomed to in the diaper industry. Finally, with the current conditions of the world as they are, it is not a good idea to use significant amounts of arable land to grow plastic precursors on the basis of either environmental or energy conservation.

In 1998, I was confronted with the following project: "Do you want to manufacture a disposable diaper using degradable backsheet and topsheets?" My immediate thought was: "Whose leg do they think they are going to pull? OK, let them think that maybe mine, I will play the game just to make sure these guys know how wrong they can be". I decided to play the role of devil’s advocate. Why did I take such position?

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