Bioplastic fantastic?

Last week I read a superb blog post, regarding the differing solutions for the plastic endemic, which I highly recommend you all check out! This week I wanted to build upon this and share with you a quick post about bioplastic advances, especially after reading an article from The Guardian which sparked my interest.

What are these mighty fine bioplastics though?

The European Bioplastics organisation defines bioplastics as ‘plastics which are formed from renewable sources or plastics which are compostable and have biodegradable qualities’. After academic considerations of plastic production trends, innovative solutions have emerged to supersede oil-based plastics to create sustainable plastics.

  

Figure 1: Bioplastics (Source: Youtube)

The good:

Bioplastics are quite fantastic (sorry about the pun). The unique production, including natural materials such as seaweed and wheat, enables bioplastics to be fully biodegradable, helping to mitigate against some of the environmental impacts across marine and terrestrial environments. According to a study from Soroudi and Jakubowicz (2013), the growth of market forces and the pressures of increasingly cost-effective sustainable packaging will result in the growth of bioplastics by an expected 50% over the next 5 years, despite record low oil prices. Moreover, the recent application of bioplastics has been estimated to create an economic sector valued at $7.2 billion globally and could help establish at least 1,000 jobs in the United Kingdom. The growth of bioplastics and their reduced impact upon the environment offers the opportunity to create a more sustainable economy, in which planetary boundaries are adhered towards to provide a safe space for humanity.

Figure 2: Bioplastic production (Source: Plastic Industry)

The bad:

Bioplastics are not always fantastic (sorry again). The Guardian article helps expose the contention that implementing bioplastics might result in consumer confusion, with a lack of educational awareness still resulting in the disposable culture. A concerted educational programme would be required to address the remaining environmental implications derived from the wide-use of bioplastics, highlighting the similarities between oil-based polymers.

The ugly:

Bioplastics remain problematic due to their inability to amend the underlying issue of the plastic endemic: the disposable culture of our society. Despite the purported ability to mitigate against the degradation of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the solution fails to address the plastic endemic with an economic paradigm shift, such as offered by Raworth (2017) with the ‘doughnut economy'. The disposable culture cemented within our society perpetuates and furthermore, could be accelerated due to the presumption that bioplastic undergoes degradation without any long-term implications by consumers, when juxtaposed against oil-based polymers.