Bioplastics

Advances in Bioplastics

Bioplastics are from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, or microbiota. Bioplastics can be made from agricultural spin-off and also from used plastic bottles and other containers by microorganisms. Ordinary plastics, such as fossil-fuel plastics are derived from petroleum or natural gas. Production of such plastics tends to require more fossil fuels and to generate more greenhouse gases than the production of biobased polymers. Bioplastics may be biobased, biodegradable, or both. The global bioplastics production capacity is set to grow 300%by 2018. Bioplastics have been specified a lead market by the European Commission. The bioplastic market’s immense growth will help drive the further evolution of a bioeconomy in Europe.