Bioplastics industry: the basics

Over the last dec­ade, bioplastics have emerged on the indus­tri­al radar. Tak­ing their place on the glob­al mar­ket, today they are said to hold around $8.3 bil­lion ¹ of the $569 bil­lion annu­al value of the plastics industry ². On top of that, pro­jec­tions of their mar­ket share show it to be on the rise with an annu­al growth rate of around 16%. Indeed, whilst bioplastics remain highly spe­cial­ised, this bud­ding sec­tor would seem to be for­ging a place for itself in the world. But not all indus­tri­al firms agree.

To bet­ter under­stand the stakes here, it is worth point­ing out that bioplastics are not new. Whilst they have only just star­ted to make waves, they have been around for as long as ‘con­ven­tion­al’ (fossil fuel-based) plastics. Their ori­gins can be traced back to late 19th Cen­tury chem­istry labor­at­or­ies when invent­ors were tinker­ing around with nat­ur­al poly­mers like cel­lu­lose. So why are we only really hear­ing about them now? The short answer: industry pre­ferred fossil fuel-based plastics.

Sib­ling rivalry

Raw mater­i­al for con­ven­tion­al plastics comes from fossil-fuel hydro­car­bons. They are effi­cient, cheap and res­ist­ant. Hav­ing these char­ac­ter­ist­ics is actu­ally how they won the favour of indus­tri­als through­out the 20th Cen­tury. Bioplastics were still there; they were just hanging around in the shad­ows.

Unfor­tu­nately, how­ever, the char­ac­ter­ist­ics that made com­mon plastics so favoured by industry, are now exactly what are work­ing against them. Indus­tri­al pro­cesses using pet­ro­chem­ic­als are a source of car­bon emis­sions and the res­ist­ance of these poly­mers to bio­de­grad­a­tion makes them prob­lem­at­ic waste products.

Even though the two types of bioplastics come under the same umbrella term, they provide sep­ar­ate solu­tions to two dis­tinct envir­on­ment­al chal­lenges faced by the plastics industry today – car­bon emis­sions and waste man­age­ment. Firstly, biobased plastics are derived from bio­mass. They are made from sus­tain­able raw mater­i­als like sug­ar cane, corn or veget­able oil, and often res­ult in less car­bon emis­sions for pro­duc­tion. They can be also be made from food residue and there is research look­ing into using non-food crops such as cel­lu­lose.

Secondly, bio­de­grad­able plastics are pro­duced using pet­ro­chem­ic­als – as with con­ven­tion­al plastic – but are dubbed to pose less of a waste prob­lem. Some bioplastics are both biobased and bio­de­grad­able, such as poly­lact­ic acid (PLA). And oth­ers have been simply labelled ‘plant-based’, as they are made using bio­lo­gic­al mater­i­als but blen­ded with pet­ro­chem­ic­al mater­i­als in pro­duc­tion mean­ing the end product is some­where in between.

“Bio” isn’t always better

Bioplastics may sound like an envir­on­ment­ally friendly altern­at­ive to con­ven­tion­al plastics, but this is only partly true. There are con­cerns that the term ‘bio­de­grad­able’ may be mis­lead­ing, often requir­ing very pre­cise tem­per­at­ure and pH con­di­tions, or rely­ing on spe­cif­ic microor­gan­isms. This means that in many cases bioplastics should not be released into the envir­on­ment, nor used in home com­posters. Instead, they require indus­tri­al com­post­ing pro­cesses, which occur at 50–70°C. And few bio­de­grade in sea­wa­ter con­di­tions, where much plastic waste unfor­tu­nately ends up. There are also ques­tions around their tox­icity, sug­gest­ing that they may not be too dif­fer­ent from con­ven­tion­al plastics after all.

Also, biobased plastics could end up com­pet­ing with the food industry for crops or land. Accord­ing to European Bioplastics, the industry used 0.7 mil­lion hec­tares in 2020. Whilst this fig­ure is only equi­val­ent to 0.021% of avail­able agri­cul­tur­al land, there are still con­cerns that the industry may lead to unne­ces­sary defor­est­a­tion. So-called 3rd gen­er­a­tion sources, or algae, do exist but quant­it­ies are cur­rently insuf­fi­cient for pro­duc­tion at indus­tri­al scales.

While multi-nation­al com­pan­ies like Total and Arkema are focus­ing much atten­tion on break­ing into the bioplastic mar­ket, oth­ers are steer­ing clear. L’Oréal have announced that they will not be using biobased plastics for the time being. In a state­ment to us they said, “even though cur­rent biobased bioplastics present favor­able green­house gas emis­sions in com­par­is­on to pet­ro­chem­ic­al plastics, oth­er envir­on­ment­al indic­at­ors such as water con­sump­tion and soil use res­ult in an over­all neg­at­ive foot­print.” Nev­er­the­less, the com­pany is still invest­ing in devel­op­ment of the biobased plastics, just not using it in their own products for the time being.

Bioplastic break­through

In Europe, 9.4 mil­lion tonnes of plastic in 2018 were col­lec­ted for recyc­ling, even though 62 mil­lions tonnes were pro­duced ³. Hence, pub­lic opin­ion and con­sumer pres­sure have driv­en new reg­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­larly with­in the EU, to find plastic altern­at­ives. Some assess­ments show that the plastics mar­ket annu­al growth is 3.2% so, when com­pared to the 16% growth in bioplastics, we see the lat­ter looks like it is gain­ing ground. But for many, that is not enough. Wor­ried about their repu­ta­tion, large con­sumer indus­tries such as food and auto­mo­biles are push­ing for new solu­tions.

So here we are. Bioplastics pop their head into the meet­ing. Rather than com­pletely change busi­ness mod­el, indus­tri­als have been seek­ing out replace­ments for con­ven­tion­al plastics. Thus, it is no sur­prise that around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, devel­op­ment of indus­tri­al scale bioplastics increased, in tan­dem with bio­fuels.

Since then, the mar­ket has star­ted to cre­ate itself a niche – or rather sev­er­al niches. On the one hand they provide bio­de­grad­able solu­tions. On the oth­er, they can steer us away from the use of car­bon emit­ting fossil fuels. Two applic­a­tions with prom­ise to help com­bat our plastic addic­tion. In their cur­rent form, how­ever, bioplastics can­not entirely replace plastics in all applic­a­tions. Hence, indus­tries are still ques­tion­ing the place for these mater­i­als in the big­ger pic­ture along­side oth­er strategies such as the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy or car­bon off­set­ting. Over the last 20 years they have sig­ni­fic­antly reduced in price, too, from ~$1000 per kg to sev­er­al dol­lars per kg, today.

Small, pre­cise markets

Today, pack­aging accounts for more than half the bioplastics mar­ket. And it would appear that the demand from con­sumers is there. In a 2019 UK study, 50% of respond­ents said they would be happy to pay more for eco-friendly pack­aging ⁴. Although, it remains to be seen wheth­er as many would actu­ally do so when faced with the real­ity of a high­er priced product.

Since 2017, EU reg­u­la­tions have star­ted to impose the use of bio­de­grad­able and com­postable bags for fruit and veget­ables. But ques­tions remain about their use in a real-world scen­ario, par­tic­u­larly with regards to the strict con­di­tions required for their bio­de­grad­ab­il­ity.

The auto­mot­ive industry, closely asso­ci­ated with oil, is under pres­sure to be green­er too. Their cus­tom­ers are more con­cerned about car­bon foot­prints. And oth­er sec­tors such as farm­ing have found uses for bioplastics as agri­cul­tur­al films where their per­form­ance pre­cisely meets demand and reg­u­lat­ory con­straints.

From a sci­entif­ic point of view, the emer­gence of these new mater­i­als rep­res­ents oppor­tun­it­ies, which chem­ic­al engin­eers can take back to the draw­ing board. New raw mater­i­als offer a whole range of pos­sib­il­it­ies to dis­cov­er new poly­mers with com­pletely unique applic­a­tions. How­ever, this approach is yet to bear fruit. And con­cerns remain with regards to tox­icity of the mater­i­als, the envir­on­ment­al impact of the sup­ply chain and the need to find raw mater­i­al that does not com­pete with food sup­plies.

Nev­er­the­less, it would seem that the biggest push for bioplastics is com­ing from above, with busi­ness lead­ers driv­ing the move­ment. Decision-makers are call­ing for a coordin­ated effort; major poly­mer man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Total are work­ing with biotech firms. But the issues are com­plex and there is still some pro­gress to be made on the R&D front.