Biodegradable Ireland - for bags that don't cost the earth

Welcome to Biodegradable.ie - the website from Polybags UK dedicated to Irish customers who want to do their bit for the environment.

As the UK's number one manufacturer of polythene packaging and eco-friendly alternatives, Polybags has a marketing-leading range of green packaging, including compostable and biodegradable ranges, plus products made from 100% recycled material and carbon-neutral, renewable bioplastic.

Whether you're looking for compostable carrier bags, 100% recycled mailing bags or carbon-neutral packing bags, you'll find all the eco-products you need at Polybags.

We offer fast delivery to Ireland plus no VAT and great savings on bulk orders for Irish customers.

Buy in pounds, save in Euros - with a big buy-in-bulk bonus

With Sterling's weakness in the currency market, your Euros go further, so you can buy in pounds and save in Euros!

New customs regulations and increased courier costs mean that small orders do cost a little more post-Brexit, but Polybags' Irish customers who buy in bulk can still take advantage of free delivery to Ireland.

All orders over £180 come with fast and free delivery - add to that the favourable exchange rate and you've got yourself a bulk-buy packaging bargain!

Our green credentials

Polybags take environmental matters very seriously. As a responsible packaging manufacturer, we understand the responsibility we have as a company, both to our environment and to the generations who will inhabit our planet in the future.

We manufacture a huge range of eco-friendly packaging that minimises environmental impact, whilst still enabling you to get the job done with the minimum of fuss, including a wide range of fully compostable products made from natural, starch-based bio-polymers.

We operate a 100%-recycling principle, with manufacturing processes designed to minimise waste wherever possible. We collect all waste in-house and use it to make new products, unless doing so is less energy-efficient than disposing of it.

Our eco-packaging range is expanding all the time, with our compostable, biodegradable and 100%-recycled ranges now accompanied by many products made from renewable material and our innovative I'm Green carbon-neutral range.

Latest news and views on biodegradable packaging

Biosak Compostable Bags & Film

Compostable bags for kitchen waste are often mentioned as though the matter starts and ends with stop-of-life disposal; on the warehouse floor and at the filling bench, the more revealing questions concern gauge discipline, seal integrity and how the film behaves below damp, biologically active loads. A well-manufactured compostable sack has to balance softness and puncture resistance without the forgiving melt-flow consistency associated with normal polythene suppliers, which means resin formulation and conversion control become far less tolerant of drift. Wet peelings, coffee grounds and food-soiled paper generate localised stress points, so dart impact and seam performance matter as much as nominal capacity; if the film necks down also readily, secondary bagging appears in practice, with an immediate penalty in tare weight, handling time and waste segregation compliance. There is also a logistical trade-off: compostable structures rarely transport the same downgauging latitude as high-density polythene suppliers chains, so volumetric efficiency in packed cases and pallet stability amid consignment handling need close attention. Where the format is sensibly engineered, nevertheless, the circular-economy case is more coherent than the marketing shorthand recommendsfood-contaminated liners can facilitate cleaner organics capture, reduce sorting friction, and transport the disposal route away from mixed residual streams, provided the material remains identifiable, mono-material in building and compatible with the intended composting infrastructure.

Degradable bags have moved out of their former price penalty largely because resin compounding and film conversion are no longer being treated as niche runs; once throughput improves, gauge control tightens and scrap rates drop, the arithmetic changes rather fast. That matters on the warehouse floor as much as it does in procurement: a bag that opens cleanly on the select-face, grasps seal integrity below secondary bagging and does not impose unnecessary tare weight across a high-volume consignment is no mere token gesture. The technical trouble, of course, has frequently sat in the balance between degradation behaviour and service life high-density polymer chains can be modified to assist controlled breakdown, nevertheless only if melt-flow consistency, slip performance and puncture resistance are properly engineered, otherwise pallet stability suffers and waste increases upstream rather than declining downstream. What has shifted is that newer mono-material formats and more disciplined micron-specific gauging now facilitate a more credible circular economy discussion; less excess film means better volumetric efficiency, lower amortised energy per unit packed and less compromises in stock handling. In practical terms, the case for degradable bags is no longer undermined by procurement cost alone, because the industrial proposition now rests on a broader calculation: material performance, handling reliability and disposal pathway are beginning to align rather than work against one another.

Full impact of biodegradable bags not known - UK study

The trouble with biodegradable bags is not the label itself nevertheless the mismatch between marketing shorthand and what in reality happens once the material leaves the select-face and enters a waste stream. Many such films rely on modified polymer chains or bio-based additives that alter melt-flow consistency and encourage fragmentation below a narrow set of conditions; outside controlled composting regimes, the same structures can persist far longer than the trade literature tends to imply. That creates technical friction at several points: contaminated mono-material recycling, unstable feedstock quality for reprocessours, and, in warehouse use, downgauged film that may compromise pallet stability or necessitate secondary bagging to offset puncture risk. There is also the less glamorous arithmetic of volumetric efficiency and tare weight impactif a bag requires greater micron-specific gauging to achieve adequate seal integrity, any supposed environmental earn is fast diluted by higher material throughput and less efficient consignment handling. In practice, the more credible route is often not a nominally degradable format at all, nevertheless a polythene suppliers structure engineered for consistent performance, clean sorting and established recovery, where surface chemistry, film toughness and stop-of-life compatibility are treated as part of the same system rather than separate claims.

Compostable packaging - superb to know

Compostable packaging tends to be misunderstood because the word recommends a tidy fit with food-waste assortments, whereas the engineering reality is far less forgiving. Most municipal food streams are tuned for fast anaerobic digestion or tightly controlled in-vessel treatment; that means predictable biological matter, high moisture loading and a short residence time, not trays, films or laminates whose polymer chains have been formulated to smash down only within a fairly narrow band of heat, aeration and dwell. If that material arrives in a food caddy and fails to disintegrate on schedule, it behaves as a contaminant rather than a feedstockwrapping digestate screens, reducing throughput and forcing secondary bagging or manual picking that no operatour wants on the line. There is also a sorting problem upstream: compostable items and normal polythene suppliers can be visually similar at select-face speed, yet their melt-flow consistency, surface behaviour and stop-of-life route differ entirely, so commingling undermines both compost output and mono-material recyclability. The awkward truth is that a pack may be compostable in certification terms and still be gross for a food-waste consignment if the local system cannot guarantee the temperature profile, particle-size reduction and maturation period needed to process it cleanly; in waste handling, compatibility with the installed plant matters above what is printed on the stock.

Degradable packaging has moved well beyond the old sales shorthand of green substitute; on the factory floor, the matter is whether a film can dash cleanly at line speed, grasp seal integrity through a mixed consignment cycle, and still present a plausible recovery route once it leaves the select-face. That is where the technical argument becomes less romantic and more exacting. A degradable polythene suppliers structure with inconsistent melt-flow behaviour or poor micron-specific gauging will wander in conversion, leading to seal-window drift, bag burst in secondary bagging, and awkward pallet geometry caused by variable pack compression. Equally, a material engineered to fragment below certain environmental triggers may solve one waste narrative while complicating another if mono-material recyclability is lost and the stream becomes contaminated with incompatible layers, coatings or starch-heavy blends. The better operatours now treat degradability as one parameter among several; surface slip, puncture resistance, tare weight impact and pallet stability are all modelled against throughput and stock-holding reality. In parallel, procurement teams are paying closer attention to feedstock sustainability and amortised energy rather than accepting headline claims at face value, because a lighter-gauge substrate with disciplined polymer-chain design can reduce volumetric inefficiency in transit while still mitigating stop-of-life burden. The industrial truth is rather plain: degradable packaging only earns its retain where material science, warehouse handling and circular-economy logic are reconciled in the same specification.

How Manufacturers Can Use Biodegradable Packaging for Consumer Goods

Biodegradable packaging sits at an awkward nevertheless increasingly practical intersection between materials science, packhouse logistics and stop-of-life handling. In trade terms, the attraction is not merely that the substrate derives from renewable feedstockstarch blends, fibre board, moulded pulp and other bio-based formatsnevertheless that its disposal route can be aligned more closely with composting or biological recovery, rather than consigning mixed waste to landfill. The trouble, as operatours on the warehouse floor know perfectly well, is that biodegradability on paper does not automatically translate into line efficiency: moisture sensitivity alters compression strength, surface friction affects pallet stability, and inconsistent caliper can compromise sealing jaws amid secondary bagging. That is why serious specification work tends to focus on fibre orientation, micron-specific gauging and melt-flow consistency, balancing pack integrity against tare weight and volumetric efficiency. Where the format is engineered as a mono-material stream, recovery is cleaner and pollution is reduced; where it is merely marketed as green yet laminated beyond practical separation, the circular economy case beginnings to unravel. The more credible applications are those in which shelf-life requirements, select-face efficiency and waste-stream compatibility have been reconciled from the outset, so the packaging performs as a working industrial material first and an environmental gesture second.

Starch bags tend to be treated as a simple badge of environmental intent; on the packing bench, they are a more exacting proposition. Where loose manufacture or moisture-sensitive lines require secondary bagging, starch-based film is often brought in not as a blanket substitute for polythene suppliers, nevertheless as a material selected with a few care around gauge, seal behaviour and the likely dwell time in the consignment. The engineering trade-off is fairly plain: bio-derived film can mitigate reliance on fossil feedstock and sits adequately within a circular-economy brief, yet it also introduces handling constraints that warehouse teams recognise at oncereduced tear propagation resistance below sharp point loads, variable stiffness in humid conditions, and less forgiving pallet-top performance if overfilled. Paper sacks and reusable crates transport the structural burden for transit protection and pallet stability; the starch bag then performs a narrower hygienic and containment role, particularly for small, loose stock where select-face efficiency would otherwise be undermined by split outers or product loss. Done properly, the result is not packaging theatre nevertheless a layered system in which tare weight, volumetric efficiency and stop-of-life routing are balanced against the unglamorous realities of seal integrity, condensation management and damage reduction on the warehouse floor.

Biggest Innovations in Biodegradable Plastic Packaging Market with Inventive Trends, Opportunities & Technical Insights 2028

Behind the market shorthand around biodegradable plastic lies a more exacting packaging question: how to engineer a film or moulded format that will dash cleanly through converting lines, grasp gauge within tight tolerances, and still enter a credible stop-of-life stream without merely displacing the waste burden elsewhere. Much relies on polymer architecture and processing discipline; compostable blends can be prone to narrower thermal windows, variable melt-flow consistency and sensitivity to ambient moisture, all of which complicate sealing performance, secondary bagging and reel stability at speed. On the warehouse floor, that material behaviour has consequencestare weight drift affects volumetric efficiency across a consignment, softer films can impair pallet stability below compression, and any inconsistency in slip properties tends to erode select-face efficiency. The more serious studies in this field are so less concerned with headline demand curves than with the engineering trade-offs: whether mono-material recyclability is being sacrificed for partial biodegradation claims, whether feedstock sustainability stands up once amortised energy and pollution rates are counted, and whether barrier performance, surface resistivity and shelf-life requirements can be reconciled without introducing multilayer buildings that the recovery system cannot realistically absorb.

Global Green Packaging Market 2018 by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2023

1 Green Packaging Market Overview

Why degradable or biodegradable packaging?

Biodegradation is the process by which organic substances are broken down by the enzymes produced by living organisms.

The website Packagingknowledge.com states: "Conventional plastics do not break down. Litter and landfill waste may take years to degrade. Another problem with ordinary plastics is that anything contained within them may not reach their full degradation potential. This results in a needless waste of valuable landfill space."

Based on the material used, bioplastics can take varying lengths of time to totally compost, but usually biodegrade up to 60% within 90 to 180 days. It is also important to know the differences between degradable, biodegradable and compostable.

Compostable

"Capable of undergoing biological decomposition in a compost site as part of an available program, such that the plastic is not visually distinguishable and breaks down to carbon dioxide, water, inorganic compounds, and biomass, at a rate consistent with known compostable materials (e.g. cellulose) and leaves no toxic residue." - American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM).

So in order for a plastic to be called compostable it needs to meet three rules:

1. It needs to be able to biodegrade, i.e. it needs to break down into carbon dioxide, water and biomass at the same rate as cellulose (paper)
2. The material has to fully disintegrate, i.e. be indistinguishable in the compost
3. Eco-toxicity - the biodegradation must not produce any toxic material so that the compost can support plant growth

Biodegradable plastic

Biodegradable plastic is one which can be chemically degraded via natural effectors such as soil bacteria, weather, plants or animals.

Note that there is no requirement for leaving no toxic residue, as well as no requirement for the time it takes to biodegrade.

Degradable plastic

By definition, this term refers to a plastic film containing a controlled percentage of an appropriate non-toxic, non-tinting additive, which will enable the plastic film to totally degrade when exposed to aerobic or anaerobic conditions, including when disposed in a landfill or other regulated dumping area, and within such period of time as specified.

A plastic therefore may be degradable but not biodegradable or it may be biodegradable but not compostable, i.e. it breaks down too slowly to be called compostable or leaves toxic residue.