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New additive said to turn plastic waste to energy

Among the first to commercialize a new additive that helps plastic packaging break down in a landfill is Maplebrook Farms of North Bennington, VT.

Maplebrook Farms is among the first to commercialize an additive that helps plastic break down in a landfill.
Maplebrook Farms is among the first to commercialize an additive that helps plastic break down in a landfill.

Called NEO PlasticsTM , the additive comes from NEO Plastics, whose Marty Tierney, Director of Business Development, describes it as an all-organic compound that gets added to a masterbatch of plastic resin so that packaging made from that resin will break down in anaerobic conditions like landfills in years vs. the centuries that traditional plastics require. In the case of Maplebrook Farms’ packaging, it’s injection-molded polypropylene containers that get the NEO Plastics additive.

Tierney hastens to add that NEO Plastics represents an entirely different science than what’s come to be known as oxodegradables. “Oxodegradables break the chain in a polymer to create micro plastic beads,” says Tierney. “The theory, of course, was that these would be small enough for microbes to attack. But microbes are not attracted to them, so they don’t actually break down and instead they wind up in our soil and water.”

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