Asia's largest environmental exposition, N-EXPO 2008 Tokyo, was held at the Tokyo Big Sight (Tokyo International Exhibition Center), Japan's largest convention center, for a period of four days between June 03 and 06, 2008. Approximately 580 companies, schools and NPOs took part in the exposition, and nineteen companies from overseas set up exhibition stands.

I attended the exhibition in order to discover what was new in the field of environmental business. It goes without saying that the thing that attracted my attention was plastic, and I came across a product known as biodegradable plastic, which is quite different from the engineering plastic that we handle.

Biodegradable plastic is broken down by the bacteria that exist naturally in the environment, and it is extremely environmentally-friendly because it is finally degraded down to water, carbon dioxide and other substances.
Apparently, biodegradable plastic is made from oil-based materials and vegetable-based materials, and the vegetable-based material consists mostly of the starch included in corn.

I was presented with some refuse bags of biodegradable plastic for kitchen waste as a souvenir, and was informed that the moisture contained in kitchen waste evaporates and the resulting vapor escapes from these bags into the outer atmosphere. I also took a sniff of the bags, and they smelled great...!

Written by Kaori Jindai