It has been proven that silage cannot be stored effectively without the use of plastic silage covers, but there are options available that reduce plastic waste and ensure silage quality for farmers.
Silostop® Orange single layer plastic High Oxygen Barrier silage covers are one of these options and we explore why below.
The Problem.
Plastic plays an essential role in livestock production due to its durability, flexibility, and low cost. It has been estimated that globally 7 to 9 kg of plastic/cow/year are used in the dairy industry. This means that a herd of 1,000 cows can generate up to 9 tons of waste plastic per year.
While Silostop® Orange can be recycled through the Plasback recycling scheme, unfortunately this does not always happen with a significant volume of plastic been buried, burned or left on farms.
Silage covers make up a small but important portion of this waste.
Plastic reduction
Conventional silage covers (often thick black or black and white covers) have been used to cover silage stacks and pits for many years. These covers rely on the density of the plastic, its thickness, to create a limited oxygen barrier and are often made from lower quality materials.
Some farmers may choose to twin these conventional plastic sheets with a cling film layer doubling the plastic required. This is a low-cost high plastic waste option.
Technical silage covers like Silostop® Orange take a different approach, they use a thinner but more advanced mix of polymer compounds and EVOH resins (Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol Copolymer) which retain the useability of the conventional covers but with significantly less material and a near-perfect oxygen barrier.
What does this mean for plastic waste?
Work in the Netherlands has shown the total weight of plastic used in a 40m long by 12m wide stack using standard film to be 241.5kg whereas with an HOB sheet like Silostop® Orange it was only 43.4kg–just 18% of the standard cover weight. HOB covers like Silostop® Orange achieve excellent results with significantly less than half the volume of plastic and therefore half the plastic waste. There are also savings in the energy required to produce HOB covers with greenhouse emissions from the production process of conventional covers being five t imes h igher. (standard film 18.9Gj / HOB film 3.39Gj)
High Oxygen Barriers
Sustainability does not stop at plastic waste as silage waste in the stack itself is potentially more damaging from an emissions perspective. The growing and harvesting of a silage crop requires significant c arbon inputs (fuel and fertiliser being key).These are sunk costs, which are incurred before the silage is fed to cattle so the biggest influence, we can have on them is to ensure that the silage quality is as good as possible and waste silage as low as possible. If you would like to know more about Silostop® Orange, you could visit our website Silostop® Orange-Ultimate Oxygen Barrier Film | Nutritech or contact your local Area Manager Contact | Nutritech.
