Editor's note: This post is part of a series. We'll be releasing one of Worldchanging ally Andy Lubershane's original comics each week until the end of the year. While many of the issues covered in the comics have been discussed on Worldchanging in the past, we hope that you'll be able to use this new medium in a different way … whether it's in your classroom, on your office wall, or to help explain ideas to friends and family.

This week's cartoon describes Compostable Plastic. This type of plastic – used for packaging, disposable serving ware, and other commonplace disposable items – has grown enormously in popularity since Jeremy Faludi posted about it back in 2004. There are still a lot of questions surrounding bio-plastic. Scientists are still working, for example, on determining what the best plant material is for making it, since fields of conventional corn currently require fossil-fuel based fertilizer to grow. And in order for "compostable" plastics to function as intended, we'll need infrastructure for getting used items into environments where composting can take place (since landfills won't cut it). But we still have hope for a better solution than littering our world with plastic junk, and we see a lot of promise in innovative solutions like this one.

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Andy Lubershane researches, writes and cartoons about sustainability from his home in Boston. He can be reached at alubershane[at]gmail[dot]com.