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).