This Offbeat Life
New Economy Cooking
Backpacking by Bus

Biodegradable Don't Mean Shit

by Dave McBee

Summer of '91. Transferring food for backpacking trip from store packaging to Ziploc bags, one of my trek-prep weight-trimming rituals (plus, when you spend a lot of time mucking about in a rain forest, waterproof is good). Noticed that the box the Ziploc's came in claimed that "this product is biodegradable." I found the unexpected virtue odd: these are plastic bags!

So I called the toll-free number on the back of the box, the Dow Chemical Company Hotline, to ask "How long? How long would it take for a Ziploc pleated-bottom resealable sandwich bag to biodegrade?'

"Well, it depends upon a range of factors, including heat, light, presence of water, humidity, and other factors," was the Dow flak-catcher's response.

"Well," I countered, "all I'm looking for is a ballpark figure. Five years, ten years, fifty years? Best case, worst case? Any numbers?"

All the representative would do is recite the wellrehearsed litany of "...depends upon a range of factors, including..." so I thanked her, and hung up.

I called a few more times, asking the same question of different operators, always resulting in the same stock answer.

I suddenly realized that I'd either better stop, or start making such calls from pay phones, lest I be traced, triangulated, and set upon by the Dow Chemical Police, who would then, of course, lay a serious biodegradation on my sorry butt. Which would, of course, take considerably less time than for the Ziploc bags.

It began to dawn on me that 'biodegradable' itself means darnednear nothing, since an awful lot of what surrounds us breaks down, ultimately, through normal biological processes. Without a quantifying time figure, biodegradable don't mean shit.

'Biodegradable' is merely an advertising buzzword, used to convince us to buy a product because the thought that said product won't be tripped over by our great-great-grandchildren, that said product won't wash up on future beaches to offend our descendants, because that word, "biodegradable" is thought to appeal to our sense of environmental responsibility, or guilt. Whichever works.

Biodegradable don't necessarily mean anytime soon.

Back to the summer of '91. Found a sheet of plywood, and thumbtacked two Ziploc bags onto it. Leaned the whole thing up against a concrete wall outside my window. A couple years passed, and I had to replace the tacks, as they were rusting (the baggies were, as yet, unchanged).

Biodegradable don't necessarily mean that it's beneficial to any form of life, while the process is taking place.

I'm out in the middle of Lake Union, in Seattle, in a racing shell, and I spot a plastic bottle floating. I try to pick up one piece of trash off the lake each time I'm out; I know I can't get it all, but accomplishing one tiny bit eases my mind a tiny bit. I've spotted some interesting things over the years: dead fish of all varieties and degrees of putrescence, toilet seats, ladders, unopened sixpacks of beer, patio furniture, birds (see: dead fish...), dogs (ditto), unfurled and presumably used condoms (the one unequivocal harbinger of spring). Even found a dead human once.

On the paddle, I sidle up to this bottle, fish it out, and start reading: it's "Septic Tank Solid Waste Dissolver", made for the heads of pleasure craft, and it's labeled "Biodegradable." The back of the bottle shows, I kid you not, a skull and crossbones, and a blunt warning, 'Warning: Contains Formaldehyde - May Cause Blindness and/or Fatalities." I guess if you're dead, blindness no longer scares you.

Yet the front label can reassure the purchaser that the product is "biodegradable" which implies that he or she can, with environmental self-assuredness, toss the empty bottle, with what few dregs are left, into the lake without guilt.

Finds like this, added to the mottled and mutated crawfish scuttling out of the PCB-rich sludge next to the Lake Union Dry Dock, a couple hundred houseboats, and at least that many other live-aboard craft moored around the lake (it's illegal to pump your bilge into the lake, but enforcement is non-existent, so, shit happens): all of these things combine to tell you why I don't like falling out of the boat. And when I do, I quickly bike home and take a long hot shower until my skin stops tingling.

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless..." - Walt Whitman

When my sister and I were kids, we would often visit Mrs. Sheehan, a past baby-sitter and close family friend, who'd moved back to the country home on Whidbey Island where she'd been raised. For city kids like us, Whidbey Island, in northern Puget Sound, was as "country" as we'd ever known. With 'Shi-shi' as our guide and mentor, we'd have such adventures as walking the road to the dump, learning to identify road kill along the way. Once at the dump, we'd scavenge for old books and magazines, and occasionally, canned goods (the island's population was so small that Shi-shi knew when someone was planning to clean out a cabin's stores, and would even spot them driving a load to the dump). And we'd roam the woods, learning what plants and berries we could eat, and capturing frogs and salamanders (always returning them to where we found them, at Shi-shi's instruction).

She also told us that if we ever needed toilet paper in the woods, fuzzy leaves could be used. I learned for myself, on one of my first solo jaunts in the dead of winter (I was wearing gloves during the incident) that nettle leaves were not a good choice for this use.

Shi-shi liked to visit a place in the woods where the horse she'd had as a child had been laid on its side and buried. Nettles, which she told us grow only in the richest soil, grew thickly over the spot. For years after the horse was buried, she said, you could stand on the little hill above the site and look down and see a horseshaped patch of nettles, like a giant green animal cracker. When I saw the site, years later, nettles still grew thickly, but the horse's shape was no longer discernible, unless I squinted until my eyes were closed, and wished.

Not a bad end for a pile of meat, eh? We should all do so well.

WE BE BIO-DEE!

I was refreshed to find out that the funeral industry, much more open to discussing alternatives than I had expected, can bury you in a solid copper capsule (for those people, apparently, for whom, "the worms go in, the worms go out..." represents a clear and palpable fear) for $10,000. They can put your earthly remains in a cardboard box, which will disintegrate in a few months, for $65. Or just about anything between the two. They can put your ashes in a natural urn" that will disintegrate under the rose arbor in a week, or dissolve in Puget Sound in ten minutes.

Biodegradation in the average coffin will vary widely, depending upon climate, moisture, materials, and soil type. In the Pacific Northwest, I was told by a spokesman for Evergreen-Washelli Cemeteries, breakdown of organic materials is among the fastest in the country; a pine box and its contents can be completely indistinguishable in as little as ten or twelve years. What my favorite anthro professor referred to as the ''annual wet-dry pulse'' of the northwest coast climate, that assures a pronounced dearth of organic archaeological artifacts and remains, also breaks down pine boxes and bodies lickety-split.

Meanwhile, back at Dow Chemical...

Dow Chemical sold Ziploc Products to S.C. Johnson & Son in 1995, and now the claim on the Ziploc box claims only that the box is biodegradable.

Recently, I tried to talk to someone at Dow about their former biodegradable product, and after spending several days caught in a loop of automated, prerecorded 1-800-numbers that ultimately returned you back to where you started (I finally remembered the old "I've got a rotary phone" dodge. It still works!), I finally given the number of their media relations office.

The spokesperson at Dow Media Relations explained that, as the product in question was no longer theirs', and as so much time had elapsed, people had either moved on or retired, so there was no one left who could discuss that product with me. Dead end. No big surprise.

More recent efforts at creating truly biodegradable plastic have focused upon using polymerized (don't ask - I don't know) corn. The only thing needed to biodegrade the corn-based product is oxygen, so the trick has been to give the stuff enough of a shelf-life that it doesn't break down while still in use.

Though biodegradable still don't mean shit, shit is biodegradable. Meaning: A does not equal B, but B equals A, sort of.

I don't know if the rest of the world has become as compulsive as Seattle has, but here, your dog must be leashed (outside of a handful of designated "off-leash zones'), and when said pooch deposits solid waste, you must pick it up and take it with you or risk a fine. So...virtually everyone out walking Rover either has a plastic bag in their pocket (and is waiting impatiently for Rover to "do his business'' so they can turn around and head back home. Dogs I interviewed almost unanimously agreed that they know that as soon as they shit, the walk is over. So they hold it as long as caninely possible), or that person is clutching a plastic bag with a warm one in it, and is scanning the horizon for a dumpster.

It's impossible to look cool while holding such a bag. I was watching this guy snobbily strutting his afghan hound ("trophy" dog) through my neighborhood. Afghan was wearing typical Afghan hound-attitude (a nasty, snippy breed), owner was wearing an Armani blazer (probably cost a grand), wool slacks, tasseled loafers. But he was gripping a little freezer bag chockfull of his dog's leavings, so he might as well have been wearing mismatched and stained sweats from Chubby & Tubby.

How many little bags of dog poop get tossed daily? You can watch this dogwalkers' rote enacted over and over: watch them standing there, impatiently waiting for Ralph to finish, one hand already in coat pocket, clutching plastic bag. Ralph finishes, then moves a few paces ahead, knowing full well that this is when the guy with the leash whips into action:

BAM hand inside bag BAM clutch poop through plastic BAM invert bag BAM shake down BAM grasp neck of bag, twist, twist (they all twist twice - watch 'em!) DONE!

I wonder what Ralph thinks, in his canine brain, about this... concealment of the poop? Does he think that WE think that something big and dangerous is tracking us by his spoor? Or does Ralph just sniff it off as another of the indecipherable things that humans do?

My point is...the stuff is biodegradable, and of some use to the planet, unless you seal it up in a plastic bag, deposit it into another, bigger plastic bag, and then heave the whole thing into a landfill, a veritable ocean of plastic bags. Who's really full of shit?

Zoo-Doo's petals...

Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo boasts (they really do!) a highly successful and profitable manure mart, their ZooDoo program, which composts the zoo's herbivores' poop into manure and sells it to Seattle's home gardeners. The shit is in such demand that they sell off carloads by lottery. Yes, in Seattle people fight over shit.

Ollie McIntyre, front man for the ZooDoo program, the self-proclaimed "Shaka of Kaka, Doctor Doo", said, when queried, that there is no reason why poop from predators, properly composted, could not be used as manure. The key phrase there is ''properly composted," as predator poop, including that of both dogs and man, contains deleterious and even harmful pathogens, which should be eliminated before use on crops raised for human consumption. Even so, such manure should not be used on crops where the manure actually comes in contact with the produce, such as root vegetables or leafy vegetables. Safe usage would include manuring ornamental plants and orchard trees (no windfall fruit - remember the E. coli!).

Doctor Doo mentioned vermi-composting as one way to break down hazardous pathogens, and recommended further research into the field of municipal human biosolids (that's just what it sounds like!) to fully answer this question. Woodland Park Zoo, the Shaka admits, bags and sends their predator poop to the dump.

But I didn't get into this business to write a column on manuring your rutabagas, so don't do anything...unusual...in your garden based on what you read here. I just mean to propose that there may be better use for Fido's leavings than to entomb them in non-biodegradable petrochemical envelopes.

Trying to live perfectly in an imperfect world

We each have our own environmental crosses to bear: I may not have driven a car in twenty-some years, but I've worked in the food service industry for my entire adult life, and through my hands have passed unknown tons of plastic-coated paper cups, foil hamburger wrappers, pizza boxes, polystyrene coffee cups, paper espresso cups, plastic take-out cartons. I know that ten-acre landfill is out there somewhere with my name on it, and that I may well be working off that karmic burden for my next several lives. But I try not to sweat the fact. I do what I can.

Do what you can to stay sane about it. Turn those plastic bags inside out, rinse, and use them a couple times. Pick up that one scrap of trash daily. Question biodegradability. Try not to obsess about it. Do what you can.

If you step in shit, smile.

Author Dave McBee is completely biodegradable. We tried to prove this conclusively, but he kept digging his way out of the worm bin.