Biodegradable is not Compostable

We've got these dog poop pickup bags for when we used to take Gretchen for walks around the park behind our house. Between the invisible fence, doggie daycare and her morning runs, she really doesn't need the exercise of the park walks.

The bags come in hundred count packages, so we have a lot leftover.

What to do?

I decided, as the little icon in the bottom right hand corner suggests, to reuse them. Not the actually used ones, but the new ones that had not been used. I gave them a new purpose.

I started using them as sandwich bags. When I ran out of the old plastic kind, I made the "greener" switch to the biodegradable ones. Now I no longer had to feel so bad about using the plastic ones with a half life longer then my whole life.

So what if the empty bags at my desk said "Pooch Pickups", their implied intention is for excrement containment, and visions of using them that way in the past are all I see when I pull the box out to load up my lunch.

They're perfectly usable sandwich bags and biodegradable too. Just take the used ones home and throw them in the compost.

No quite. There's a huge difference between biodegradable and compostable (duh?). Probably a few months or maybe even a year difference.

All the bags I put in the compost this summer were still there. Every time I'd flip or stir the compost they were there, sticking to the pitch fork tines, to remind me of this difference.

So I gave up. I pulled out what I found and threw them away. Not only that, but I stopped using them for sandwiches too. I've made the even greener choice (and less consumable) to use Tupperware for my sandwiches.

The unused bags will just sit on the shelf or in the car till we take the dogs somewhere we'll need them. With my luck, by the time I do go to use one, my fingers will push through the degraded bottom of the bags just as I go to pick up its intended contents.

- b