This CD contains a special two-hour Webinar broadcast from December 5, 2007, that detailed up-to-the-minute insights into the market forces affecting package design and sustainability. The dense program ...
By Eric Hartman
Technically speaking, bioplastics are plastics manufactured using biopolymers, which are polymers that are present in or created by living organisms. These include polymers from renewable resources that can be further processed to create bioplastics.
Bioplastics can be derived from renewable biological resources such as corn, vegetable oils, soybeans, wood, grasses, or other natural feedstock. They are generally regarded as being more sustainable than those derived from fossil fuels as a carbon source and are believed to introduce less net new greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere if or when they degrade.
Unfortunately, the cultivation and production of bioplastic materials is not energy-neutral. In our current society, the energy used for the growing of raw materials to produce bioplastics and polymers, and the energy used in the conversion process to turn them into workable materials, is most often based on the consumption of fossil fuels. This non-renewably sourced energy is used to power farm machinery and irrigate crops. It is used for transporting crops to processing plants and also in the production of the fertilizers and pesticides necessary to derive acceptable yields from the crops. It is also used to extract the processable biomaterials from the biomass, and ultimately, to produce the bioplastic.
An economic shift
Our fossil fuel-based economy has been in place for well over a century. During that time, the economy has had the opportunity to develop a level of efficiency in the conversion process of fossil fuels to produce a wide variety of materials and energy products. Bioplastics, on the other hand—at least those which are being explored as substitutes for petroleum-based materials—are relatively new to the global scene.
One could argue that cellulose, one of the oldest plastics and itself a bioplastic, has had sufficient time in which to fulfill its potential for widespread use. Unfortunately, cellulose (like many newer bioplastics) has a limited range of functionality that restricts it to a narrow scope of applications. Fossil fuel-derived materials, on the other hand, have been the target of significant research efforts that have resulted in an ever-expanding array of polymeric entities and have been tailored to a wide variety of properties and uses. These non-sustainable materials have long since eclipsed cellulose in their versatility.
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