Bioplastics plastics

Lunt, J. The World ol Bioplastics. European Bioplastics. Plastics News Executive Forum, Tampa, Florida, March 7-10,2010. 

According to the definition by Japan BioPlastic Association (JBPA), there are two types of so-called GreenPla. One is biodegradable plastic, which means that the plastic will be completely decomposed into H2O and CO2 by environmental... 

Biopolymer Technologies (Biop) offers a starch-based material containing an additive consisting of a vinyl alcohol/vinyl acetate copolymer. In 2005, the company transferred production of its bioplastics from The Netherlands to Schwarzheide in Germany and invested 7m in a new plant there, increasing its production capacity to 10,000 tonnes per annum. The announcement followed the decision earlier in 2005 by BASF to produce its Ecoflex biodegradable plastic, one of the components of Biop s Biopar resins, at the Schwarzheide site. 

Japanese electronics company Sharp has developed technology to blend PLA biopolymers with conventional plastics recovered from scrapped consumer appliances. Petroleum-based plastics are generally incompatible with bioplastics, and blends tend to show inferior properties such as impact strength and heat resistance. Sharp claims to have overcome these problems with a microdispersion technology that dramatically improves the properties of the blended material. The company expects to use such blends in its consumer electronics products by early 2007. 

Biomass-derived polymers are often touted as "green" alternatives to polyethylene and other plastics used for packaging. However, not all biopolymers are biodegradable (2). Moreover, as we shall see in section 8.5, degradability of biopolymers is sometimes overstated (3). In this chapter, we will quantify the contribution of plastics to municipal solid waste in the USA and examine some of the realities about biodegradability of "bioplastics."... 

L. Shen, J. Haufe, and M. Patel, Pro-BlP 2009 Product overview and market projection of emerging bio-based plastics. Report commissioned by EPNOE et European Bioplastics, 2009. 

Part II discusses bioplastics and biocomposites. One of the main environmental problems in industrial development is plastic waste and its disposal. An enormous part of scientific research has been directed towards environmentally benevolent bioplastics that can easily be degraded or bio-assimilated. High performance biobased composites (biocomposites) are very economical and open up a wide range of applications. 

The language used to describe these new (or sometimes old ) materials can be confusing, and too often is misused. One particularly problematic term is bioplastics. One common definition for bioplastics is plastics that are either biodegradable or made from renewable sources a clear recipe for confusion. We will not use this term. Rather, we will use the term biobased plastics to refer to plastics made from biological sources (typically plants). The plastics may be made directly by biological organisms (e.g., polyhydroxyalkanoates) or by chemical polymerization of monomers made from such sources (e.g., polylactide). Plastics may also be partially biobased (such as the CocaCola PlantBottle made from PET that is partially biobased). 

The term bioplastics covers two different concepts that we tend to confuse. The first categorizes the so-called bio-sourced plastics from agricultural resoinces, a priori renewable, they are not necessarily degradable. The second includes biodegradable plastics they are not necessarily bio-soinced they are also polymers derived from fossil resources and chemistry. 

Thus, we can see that the studies published on bioplastics generally look at different impact categories, and rarely with the same computational methods. In addition, we need to take account of the fact that the goals and scopes of the studies are also variable, as are the functional units defined (simple lifecycle inventories as well as complete LCAs can be fonnd some studies are performed from cradle to factory gate for pellets or finished products, whereas other studies also integrate one or more end-of-life scenarios). In such conditions, it is understandable that it is not easy to write a coherent summary of publications relating to LCA of bioplastics in order to provide a simple response to the question Are bioplastics green plastics ... 

As we have seen, the diversity of LCA studies, both in terms of the form and their objectives, makes it difficult to give a simple summary. However, this diversity is not the only hmitation to the LCA method - particularly so in the context of a study of bioplastics. As previously mentioned, bioplastics fall down because of the problem of lack of maturity of the technologies used for their production. In case of a comparison between a bioplastic solution and a conventional plastic solution, this lack of maturity may partially or totally offset the benefit we expect to be able to draw from using materials from renewable sources. The choice of irput data for the computation of the lifecycle is of cracial importance, and it is important for future technologies to ask the question of whether to use teal and current data or projected future data. 

Other similar guiding frameworks can be envisaged, such as that proposed by Plastics Scorecard [CLE], which attributes a score in relation to a series of environmental, health-related or social criteria, to various stages of the lifecycle of a product (production of raw material, manufactrrre of plastic, use and end of life). Notably, this approach was employed by Alvarez-Chavez et al. [ALV 12] in putting forward a classification for various bioplastics. 

For example, if we consider the set of biodegradable and/or bio-based polymers, a recent market study published by the organization European Bioplastics (http //en.european-bioplastics.org/) shows that world capacity for production of these polymers, in 2012, was only around 1.4 million tons, of which 0.6 milhon were accounted for by biodegradable polymers. Compare this with worldwide plastic consumption of 288 million tons, of which, 57 million tons were in Europe alone, according to Plastics-Europe (http //www.plasticseurope.org), in 2012. Recent projections - particularly that presented by European Bioplastics - show that these very rapidly growing polymers will, nevertheless, remain a niche market for the next 10 years. They will account for only a small percent of the world plastic market. Thus, it is not envisaged that these polymers can totally replace conventional plastics. 

Biograde B-F Cardia Bioplastics (China) and Biograde Limited (Australia) Aliphatic copolyesters Plasticized starch-based... 

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