By Dan Hockensmith 23/05/2008
Anybody involved in bioplastics has a “lot of room to grow today”.PRW.com – Plastics Industry News
23 May 2008 – Plant-based plastics are still in their infancy – that means there’s an opportunity to sustainably manage their growth through so-called green chemistry.
This is according to two leading bioplastics researchers in keynote speeches at a new technology forum on advances in polymers from renewable resources.
The forum was held earlier this month at the annual Society of Plastics Engineers Antec conference in Milwaukee, US.
Jim Lunt, managing director of business development specialists Jim Lunt & Associates LLC said: “Anybody involved in bioplastics, you’ve got a lot of room to grow today.”
Lunt is a co-founder of biopolymer pioneer NatureWorks LLC of Minnetonka, Minn and Tianan’s vice president of sales and marketing.
He quoted an estimate from Berlin-based trade association, European Bioplastics eV, that annual global production of bioplastics by 2011 will increase to 2.2bn pounds, up from 578m pounds produced in 2007.
He said: “This will still only be 0.7% of the approximately [508bn pounds] of plastics in use today.”
Lunt argued that consumer and governmental moves toward products perceived as being less dependant on petroleum and more environmentally friendly will drive up demand for bioplastics. And bioplastics have made their way into important pieces of legislation.
* The Japanese government has set a goal that 20% of all plastics consumed in Japan will be renewably sourced by 2020.
* Germany has a phased-in ban on solid waste with more than 5% organic content in its landfills; that will affect bioplastics starting in 2012. Korea and Taiwan have similar laws in place.
* Under the 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, each US federal agency must design a plan to purchase as many bio-based plastics as practically possible.
In addition to new laws, petroleum feedstocks are drying up: for every four barrels of oil used, only one new barrel is discovered. Petrochemical-based plastics consume about 2.5bn barrels of oil annually. He added: “The incentive for bioplastics is getting much more attractive to people.”
The focus of bioplastics is changing from end-of-life cycles to making more durable products from future plant-based feedstocks. Lunt said that by 2011, automotive and electronics applications will account for almost 40% of the global bioplastics total, compared with 12% today.
He argued that in addition to polylactic acid, polyhydroxyalkanoates, polyhydroxybutyrate valerate and other bioresins in use today, tomorrow’s market leaders will produce green low and high density polyethylene, polypropylene, acrylics and nylon.
Lunt and Ramani Narayan, professor of material science and engineering at Michigan State University, said that some in the plastics industry are getting hung up on whether bioplastics merely contain plant-based additives, are biodegradable – or both.
Both men argued that biodegradable and bio-based are not necessarily exclusive terms. Narayan said there’s no use arguing over which is better: in the end it all comes down to carbon emissions.
He said: “When you’re talking ‘bio-based’ or you’re talking ‘biodegradable,’ or ‘renewable,’ … you’re really talking about carbon footprints and the ability to reduce it. It’s a feedstock focus as opposed to petroleum.”
More importantly for plastics engineers, he added, is to bear in mind that if biodegradable products are not removed form their defined disposal environments degraded fragments of plastics become potential toxin carriers up the food chain.
l Dan Hockensmith is a journalist at Plastics News a sister title of PRW and EPN.
