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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Max Tapener biodegradable tape source

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  • From: road's end farm <organic101@linkny.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Max Tapener biodegradable tape source
  • Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 10:55:51 -0500



On Mar 11, 2005, at 7:09 AM, Jim Fruth wrote:

On March 10th, Mark Wessel asked, "Does anyone know if there is a
biodegradable tape you can use with the
Max Tapener??"

Contact Mary Jo Thaden at mdtgrow@juno.com

Jim Fruth
Pequot Lakes, MN


I don't know what she has available; but depending on your degree of concern about this, you may want to double check what it biodegrades into. A lot of "biodegradable" materials on the market break down into bits, but the bits may be long-term persistent, and/or the compounds that make up the material may include various materials you don't want. Whether you're going to wind up with enough to be a problem from a tapener is another question. But I don't know whether you want the tape biodegradable for organic certification purposes (if so, check with your certifier), or if you just don't want to have to cut it back off before it girdles.

Some years ago there was a "biodegradable" plastic mulch on the market (it may still be around, I don't know). I asked to see the studies; it turned out that they had been able to get about 5% or 10% breakdown annually by keeping the material in greenhouse temperature conditions and stirring extra microbes into the soil. It came apart into little pieces a lot faster than that, of course -- those are the figures for disintegration into molecular components; but that's what they were advertising it as doing. And to top that, the study wasn't even done on the material they were selling, but on a "similar" material (what the differences were, they didn't say).

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly





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