Is the PLA straw so perfect under the plastic ban?

In recent years, due to the increasing importance of environmental protection, China has started to implement the strictest plastic ban, and plastic straws, which are often used in our daily life, are on the list. Plastic straws may seem small, but with an estimated 46 billion straws used in the country every year, they pose a huge environmental challenge. So as far as straws are concerned, there is a definite trend to replace them with biodegradable materials.

At present, the alternatives to plastic straws on the market can be roughly divided into several categories, namely, paper straws, PLA straws, other materials straws, or simply do not use straws. Among them, paper suction and PLA straw are the mainstream solutions on the market at present, not to mention the paper straw. At the beginning of the year, due to the poor experience, it was scolded by milk tea lovers on the hot search. Here we will mainly talk about PLA straw.

PLA straw, scientific name “polylactic acid straw”, the production of PLA straw using the raw material of environmental protection “lactic acid”. We all learned in high school that lactic acid can be converted from sugars. Therefore, in the production of PLA, the source of sugars is usually starch extracted from corn and other grains. After saccharide extraction is completed, PLA molecule is obtained by going through a fermentation process, and then the lactic acid monomer is specially concentrated, and the product is purified by vacuum and polymerized under certain conditions.

Although the raw material production process of PLA looks very complicated, there is almost no difference between the production process of PLA and the production process of ordinary straws. It is a one-time extrusion molding process, but the change of raw materials generates different straws.

Due to its special material, PLA has good biodegradability and can degrade into carbon dioxide and water without causing pollution to the environment. It is recognized as an environmentally friendly material and has a similar experience with traditional plastic straws, so it has attracted much attention. But are PLA straws really that perfect?

The result may not be so. From the perspective of cost concerned by merchants, the cost of PLA straws is higher than that of paper straws due to the high price of raw materials. Assuming that the procurement cost of plastic straws in the past is about 3 cents, while the procurement cost of degradable PLA straws reaches 10 cents, the increase of procurement cost becomes the resistance to the implementation of PLA straws.

Secondly, due to the limitation of the performance of raw materials, the moisture resistance and airtightness of PLA straws are stable at room temperature, but they will decompose automatically when the temperature is higher than 45℃. Therefore, PLA straws cannot be used for hot drinks, and are generally used for cold drinks. Therefore, the use scenario of PLA straws has great limitations.

As far as environmental protection is concerned, relevant professionals revealed that most of the completely biodegradable plastic products on the market at present are degradable under industrial compost conditions, rather than natural conditions. Even if it’s completely biodegradable, the general public doesn’t have the ability to separate biodegradable products from generic products. Cities also lack a separate recycling system, and biodegradable becomes non-biodegradable, ending up in landfills or incinerators.

Therefore, at this stage, the use of PLA straw is not the most perfect substitute, and there are still many problems to overcome.