Lower Mainland Airsoft Group Forum

Hey just thought I would put this out there....want constitutes a bio BB? I ask because a had a flood in my crawl space last year and one of my BB bottles got filled with water so I figured I would just leave it and see what happens. A year later the BB's are still intact and still hard, I kept adding water. I have also tried burning some and they are not breaking down. I have some in my yard from 2 years ago and they are still looking good.

So what does it take to break these down? Is there any standards that are required. I haven't been out to the fields for a while but last time I was out they were looking pretty cluttered with BB's.

Does the bag/bottle say bio?

Reason I ask is ive never actually seen a bb deteriorate, but yet we all keep using these "bio" so my view is, if it says bio..... shoot it.

Yes...that is all I buy is the Bio but I doubt there are any standards they need to follow just that sometime in idea conditions they start to fall apart.

Bio BBs are polylactic acid from corn. The standard test conditions for certification are high volume industrial composting.

Claymore has done some home testing, though.

I have bio bb's in my garden, 2 years later they still look new.


if it says BIO your fine, don't look into it too hard.

There are more biodegradable bbs out there but do you want them breaking in your gun, or shattering sending small pieces flying everywhere, but probably in someone's eye. With my luck sometimes it would be me.
Like the other guys said, if it says bio on the bag, that's all you need. Unless you are Jsae.

Yep, that's right.

But the research is a huge time sink, and still you might not find out what you actually want to learn.

And as long as you are thinking about storage risks, the PLA-based plastics are pretty stable. That's the stuff in biodegradable plastic food packages: it'll withstand water, food oils and food acids.

If bio bbs are made from PLA than they will basically never decompose. PLA will only decompose in an industrial / commercial compost facillity. They need a constant temperature of about 90 degrees to undergo the decomposition process. So you could leave them outdoors indefinitely without seeing any change. But don't tell the environment-nazis, they will get all up in arms about the whole thing.

But keep them away from heat. At around 60 degrees celsius PLA starts to deform. Deformed BBs = bad

As an interesting side note, PLA sees a lot of use in 3d printing applications.

Holy shit, Kyle lives! How's our local tacti-seamstress been?

Lol ya I'm still alive, and I prefer the term tacti-seamster