Chinese experts have developed a food box and plastic sheet that could turn into water and carbon dioxide "in a short period of time" after being buried underground.

A scientist with the Nanjing-based Huanlu Co., who gave his surname as Zhang, said the products are produced using corn, starch and six varieties of plant fibers.

Zhang said the buried food box and plastic sheet will be "consumed" by microbes in the soil, and thus converted into water and carbon dioxide.

A government department in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu province, has allocated 300,000 yuan (nearly US$40,000) for commercialization of the products.

It normally takes hundreds of years for a traditional plastic food box and plastic sheet to degrade completely.

Zhang said the new food box is better than the "environment-friendly" paper lunch box, since it still contains polythene or chemical synthetic material that take 200 years to completely degrade.

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2003)