Bioplastics

Bioplactics are derived from forms of renewable biomass sources such as vegetable fats and oils, starch or microbiota. The beauty of Bioplastic is that it is biodegradable which is a fancy word for being able to add into a compost heap and allowing it to break down in either anaerobic or aerobic environments, releasing its natural make-up back to the earth.

This chart shows the differences in time scale that different materials take to degrade and what the organic make-up of the material is.

The materials that take the longest to degrade are common plastics and glass, which can take from 100 years to over 1000 years to degrade.

What Biodegradable plastic is, is it has been treated perhaps with synthetic polymers which allows them to be easily degraded by micro-organisms and return to nature; but there are a few different options other that synthetic polymers that allow for this to happen.

Application of Bioplastics

Fields of application for bio-plastic materials and products are increasingly steadily. Today, bio-plastics can be found mainly within the following market segmants:

• Packaging
• Food-services
• Agriculture/horticulture
• Consumer electronics
• Automotive
• Consumer goods and household appliances

But there are a lot more markets starting to use bio-plastic materials such as building and construction, household, leisure, or fibre applications (clothing, upholstery).

Products that show vast growth rates are among others bags, catering products, mulching films or food/beverage packaging.

http://eu.european-bioplastics.org/market/applications/