Re: Biodegradable Plastic Emerging

 Considering corn is on its way to being the biggest GM'd crop in the world, and can not be considered safe,how do you think this fact plays into the notion of "biodegradable plastics" ?

Can one assume/believe any of it is "organic?

If composted or otherwise degraded any genes that may have been spliced in to the corn is simple going to degrade with the plastic.  The alternative are plastics filling up landfills, being dumped wherever, ending up in our water ways and oceans where they harm wildlife.......

I am curious though.  How many people that are so worried about GMO also happen to drive a car?  Not only do they have to deal with the smog but also the gases put off by the car's plastics. How many have particle board or carpeting in their homes?  Particle board and new carpet padding both put off formaldehyde, one of the most carcinogenic substances known.  I could go on with my list, bu the point is that I can think of so many things I would worry about long before whether composing plastics from potential GMO plastics is going to create some frankenworms that are going to come up out of the soil to attack us, or something.  This is one of the drawbacks to the internet.  With the simplicity of spreading information, true or not, it seems like we have had so many flavors of the month as to what people are going to worry about.  At one point it was soy.  Then came canola, now it is GMO.  Granted some of the stuff may be legit, but too often the scare tactics go way overboard and are frequently filled with misleading or misinformation.  I have given lots of examples of this with the soy claims.  And have covered some of this with canola, for example the claim that it is used to make mustard gas, which is completely ludicrous.

Corn based plastics are actually made from the starch, not the proteins where any spliced genes would likely be anyway.  So even if we consumed these plastics they are unlikely to have the same risks of allergies that have occurred in the past with the 'Starlight" corn, which was removed from the market a while ago.  And these plastics are nothing new.  Corn based styrofoam substitutes have been around for years.  We get them all the time in shipments.  Yet I have yet to hear of even one case of an allergy or any other type of reaction to any of these corn based plastics.

Instead of worrying about the possible doom and gloom of new plastics that may or may not be GMO we should be focusing on the fact that industry is FINALLY taking a step in the right direction to help the planet.