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I am particularly excited to hear that a US sheet foam manufacturer has created an additive for polyolefin foam that makes it biodegrable. This is an incredible breakthrough.
Bio-Tec Environmental LLC and the M.H. Stallman Company, a global leader in the development and manufacture of specialty fabricated crosslinked polyolefin foams for use in a wide variety of industrial and consumer markets, announce the first commercial production of the B-LinkTM line of biodegradable crosslinked foam, using the proprietary additive EcoPure® from Bio-Tec Environmental LLC. The EcoPure® additive enables microorganisms in a landfill disposal site to metabolize the molecular structure of most common plastics into an inert humus-like form that is harmless to the environment. This process takes organic compounds, mixed with nutrients, a scissoring agent and a carrier resin to enable biodegradation while not affecting the normal use performance of the polymers.
Polyolefin foam has many benefits. It's closed-cell, durable, and chemically resistant. In it's injection molded form, it creates products with incredible detail and unusual geometric features. What it hasn't been is biodegrable. President of the M.H. Stallman Company, said,
"This advancement in green technology will have a major impact on our industry. Until today crosslinked polyolefins could not be recycled and would not break down once thrown away. Now with our B-LinkTM products we are able to provide our customers with crosslinked foams that meet all of their performance requirements during normal use but will safely biodegrade once disposed of in a landfill."
I'm hoping this is an indication of more developments to come to help the foam manufacturing industry expand it's product offering as well as resolve environmental issues at the same time.