In recent years, a considerable number of new bioplastic companies have entered the market. They assert that sustainable, renewable resources are the solution to the global plastic crisis and promise to transform the industry with their bio-developed polymer platforms. Everything sounds so easy, and ‘bio’ certainly has cache with investors and appears to be gaining traction with the end user. However, in truth, bio plastics are at the beginning of a very long and, often, frustrating journey.
Naturally, given the growing worries about plastic waste and the effects of conventional plastics on the environment, bioplastic makes perfect sense. To address these issues, people, companies, and governments are looking for substitute materials that are more sustainable and less harmful to the ecosystem. Bioplastics, which are made from renewable resources such as corn starch, sugarcane, vegetable oils and even seaweed, offer a more sustainable solution to traditional plastics. They are mostly biodegradable and compostable,
meaning they can be broken down by natural processes and do not pose a long-term threat to the
environment.
The industry for bioplastics is still young, though, and development is obstinately sluggish. The trade group European Bioplastics projects that the world’s ability to produce bioplastics will increase from around 2.23 million tonnes in 2022 to over 6.3 million tonnes in 2027. Packaging continues to be the most common application, accounting for 48% of the market in 2022. According to the trade group, bioplastics are also used in the automotive and transportation, horticultural and agricultural, electric and electronics industries, and their proportion of the total market is anticipated to grow somewhat.
Nonetheless, bioplastics’ share of the total plastics industry is still rather small, at about 0.5%*.
Aquapak’s Chief Technology Officer, John Williams, states: “The bioplastics sector faces a variety of issues, none of which are exclusive of one another. The first is feedstock: is there enough of it and where is it coming from? Promoting land use change has drawn criticism because woodlands are approved for use as feedstock, and do we completely comprehend how an increase in feedstock sourced from marine sources, for instance, can affect biodiversity? It’s interesting to note that independent investigations indicate that the effects of growing usage of agricultural and related feedstock are negligible, although this misconception continues to cause considerable anxiety.
The waste management system presents the second difficulty. To be circular, the industry must overcome the shortcomings of the current waste management system. Being compostable or biodegradable is meaningless if the material cannot be recovered via collection and processing alone.
Reusing, recycling, or composting all materials is necessary to lessen their end-of-life effects and, eventually, soil and marine contamination.The third is that bioplastics are expensive to make. Bioplastics are more expensive to produce compared to traditional petroleum-based plastics, and this increased cost is often passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for bioplastics products. Because of this, bioplastics may find it challenging to compete with conventional plastics, particularly in markets where costs are a factor, like packaging.
The fourth, and maybe most significant, problem is creating solutions that can be widely marketed. Polypropylene and polyethylene have grown so prevalent for a reason. Environmental concerns were not considered when they were created. as their practical advantages caused them to gain dominance. The process of refining crude oil is highly efficient and has much greater carbon density per unit of conversion in comparison to the conversion of plant feedstocks through biorefineries.
Despite strong investor backing, many of the bio offerings now on the market still require a lot of work. There isn’t only one biobased material option, despite what some people say. Given the complexity of the planned end products, new biobased products must fulfil functional and legal and regulatory obligations. If the sector keeps working in silos, there’s a very real chance that advancement will continue to be excruciatingly slow. The secret to success will be industry partners working together.
“The bioplastics industry can benefit from many of the lessons we acquired from the creation of Hydropol; in fact, several of them are now collaborating with us, but the more we can all work together, the better. But creating a new polymer requires a lot of effort and money. time, and a lot of the difficulties you encounter are beyond your control. You have to work in a setting designed for materials like PE and PP and deal with ever more intricate combinations of materials. It is not an easy undertaking to move the globe away from them. The industry must work together to combine new and current materials in order to speed up the shift to a genuinely circular economy supply chain and enhance the environment. combine new materials to optimise end-of-life and utility.