Why choose beyondGREEN's sustainable plant-based products?
Why are conventional single-use plastics so harmful in the first place?
We overuse single-use plastics.
At beyondGREEN, we noticed a problem with conventional plastics and set out to create a solution. ( ¹ ). Currently, around 16 billion pounds of plastic waste enter our ocean each year. Around one million single-use disposable plastic bottles are purchased every minute. Plastic bottles aren't our only vice, about 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used every year. ( ² ).
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How do single-use plastics impact our environment?
The plastic mentioned above is directly responsible for the consumption, suffocation, and death of hundreds of different species of marine life. Since conventional single-use plastics stick around in our environment for centuries, the continued bombarding of our wildlife is inevitable unless we can make a change for the future today.
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What about our health?
Animals and the ocean are not the only ones affected by plastic pollution. Did you know, that our tap water also contains plastic in it from single-use plastic pollution? And the plastics that animals ingest may very well end up on our dinner tables and into our stomachs. ( ³ ). The micro plastics we consume from fish such as shellfish contain chemicals that can disrupt our natural hormonal functioning and endocrine system. Also, many plastics use flame retardants to strengthen the substance, which have been shown to be harmful to brain development in children and fetuses. ( ⁵ ).
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Lack of Substitutes.
One main focus world leaders and environmentalists are looking towards is a total lifestyle change to focus more on the reuse and discontinuation of single-use plastics because of a lack of sustainable substitutions to single-use plastics. At beyondGREEN, our bioplastics could be the answer to a worldwide problem, only growing bigger. We are expected to more than triple those 16 billion pounds of single-use plastics going into our ocean by 2040 without intervention now. ( ⁴ ).
A bioplastic made to degrade in the natural environment.
Unlike our conventional plastic counterpart, beyondGREEN's material is made from 100% sustainable plant-based material and will degrade naturally in the environment. Our products will break down completely in an anaerobic or aerobic compost setting, either at a home or industrial level. Many of today's population are unwilling to make drastic lifestyle changes, such as transitioning to a completely "zero-waste" life. Our biopolymers made from corn could be the answer for changing our exponential trend of pollution today.
sources:
¹ https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/marine-plastics
² https://www.unep.org/interactive/beat-plastic-pollution/
