You may have noticed new products popping up in grocery stores over the last few years with green-sounding labels: ‘biodegradable plastic bags’, and products with ‘plant-based packaging’. Perhaps you too were inclined to opt for these seemingly ‘eco’ alternatives over conventional petroleum-based plastics…

The key is to understand which of these eco-sounding plastics actually help to address the plastic problem, and which afford no benefit to the environment and simply perpetuate complacency.