Biodegradable Polymers Definition, Classification and Application as an Alternative to Plastic

Biodegradable Polymers Definition, Classification and Application as an Alternative to Plastic 

Handbook of Sustainable Polymers Processing and Applications Edited byVijay KumarThakur and Manju Kumari Thakur Copyright 2015 Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd. 

Plastic materials are currently considered very Important owing to their exceptional properties and performance over other materials such as metal and wood. It is projected that the demand for plastics will continue to rise following a trend that has increased since the 1950s [Azapagic et al., 2003 Rosato et al., 2003], as almost every product we purchase come encased in plastic. 

Plastic packaging provides excellent protection for the product, it is cheap to manufacture and seems to last forever. Non-biode-gradability is a major environmental problem. Plastics have very high volume-to-weight ratio and since those are non-biodegradable, their frequent use and consumption causes White Pollution. Accumulated plastic film residues in soil have caused significant decrease in fertility of the soil and hence affect the overall quality of soil. 

Over the past decade, researchers and citizen advocates have developed several tools to assist in decision making about plastics selection. The plastics pyramid (Fig. 5.1] developed by Thorpe and Van der Naalde in 1998 was an early attempt to visually display the life cycle hazards of different plastics to assist in materials selection. This ranking focused on the toxicity of the material, considering production hazards, use of harmful additives, hazards in use, and disposal hazards. In this pyramid, bio-based polymers form the bottom of the pyramid, indicating they are most preferable, as they are made from renewable resources, and theoretically are biodegradable and compostable (Rosalia et al., 2012]. 

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