Bioplastics
What are the main types of Bioplastics, and are they the solution?
There are two main types of bioplastics that are both biodegradable and renewable:
PHAs
Source: Made by micro-organisms from organic materials.
Uses: Medical applications (skin substitutes, sutures, slings), single-use food packaging, agriculture (mulching film, plant pots / labels, greenhouses).
Benefits: Carbon-neutral, edible, biodegradable, renewable.
PLAs
Source: Made by extracting and refining sugars from plants.
Uses: Bottles, films, styrofoam, tableware, textiles, packaging, 3D printing, medical implants.
Benefits: Uses 68% less energy and 68% less greenhouse gases than fossil polymers.
Other inconvenient facts
- The plants required to produce bioplastics at scale use enormous amounts of land, water, fertilizers, harvesting, transportation - all of which is not eco-friendly.
- While officially ‘biodegradable’, many bioplastics actually require specific and expensive conditions to do so.
- Many bioplastics can still take hundreds of years to fully breakdown - and they too can create microplastics.
- Bioplastics cannot be recycled with fossil plastics.
The other bioplastics
There are several other important types of bioplastics, such as:
- Bio-based and biodegradable plastics that are not made from fossil raw materials, which includes PLAs and PHAs, such as thermoplastic starch (TPS) and PBS.
- Bio-based plastics that are not biodegradable, such as: PPC, PEP, Bio-PE, Bio-PP, Bio-PA, Bio-PET, Bio-PVS, and Bio-PTT
- Biodegradable plastics that are made with fossil raw materials, such as: PCL and PBAT
