Bioplastics offer a promising alternative to fossil-fuel based plastics in combating climate change. Bioplastic products are made from renewable biomass and can be biodegradable, reducing environmental impact. However, challenges such as cost, disposal confusion, and the need for sustainable biomass production hinder their widespread adoption. It is crucial to address these concerns and prioritize reducing the carbon-intensity of biomass production for bioplastics to make a significant impact in replacing conventional plastics.
In the face of the threat of climate change, bioplastics are an essential substitute to conventional fossil-fuel based plastics.
Demand for plastics is projected to grow TKTK by TKTK, and recycling is a broken system with only 9% of plastics recycled globally. Reducing over-consumption of plastic through better design of products and packaging, rethinking the service models around the ownership of things, designing for disassembly and repair, and improving the recycling system are all necessary but not sufficient to end our reliance on new petrochemical feedstock to meet global demand for moldable, resilient, and hygienic plastics.
Enter bioplastics.
While conventional petrochemical plastics are made from non-renewable fossil fields like petroleum, natural gas, or coal byproducts, bioplastics are made from renewable biomass - like corn starch, plants sugars, or agricultural waste - or are made by microbes being fed such plant sugars.
Bioplastics are beneficial because they are renewable with reduced climate emissions. Many are also biodegradable.
Biobased is a different variable than biodegradable. Right now the majority of our plastics are petrochemical in origin and non-biodegradable at the end of their use life-cycle.
Non-biodegradable conventional plastics do not break down in the environment and persist for hundreds to thousands of years. Biodegradable plastics are able to be broken down by microbes reducing the accumulation of waste.
Bioplastics can be identical or superior to many conventional petrochemical plastics on performance. But there are challenges to scale bioplastics to the point that they can make a dent in the consumption of petrochemical plastics.
The first is cost. For now many bioplastics are more competitive than their petrochemical competitors.
Next is confusion around disposal: there is a worry that they will contaminate the conventional synthetic plastic recycling stream and a concern that some compostable bioplastics only compost when they reach temperatures which are difficult to achieve in a home composting context or if the material escapes the waste stream and ends up in nature.
But another important concern is that for the potential upsides of bioplastics to be realized it is important to recognize that it is not enough for them to just be bioplastics. The mere fact of being derived from biomass does not make something environmentally sustainable. Industrial agriculture, with its dependence on fossil fuel derived fertilizers, is hardly the template for how to decarbonize human society. Reducing the carbon-intensity of the production of the biomass being turned into bioplastic is essential.