Currently, 99% of the plastics produced in the world come from oil and only 1% are biobased obtained from renewable sources. To investigate the most advantageous applications of biobased materials, as well as how to improve their performance and the treatment of their waste, a team from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) has been participating since 2019 in the project “Bio-Plastics Europe: Sustainable solutions for bio-based plastics on land and seaâ€, together with 22 universities, research centers and companies from all over Europe and Malaysia.
The coordinator of the UPM group and professor at the Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineers, JoaquÃn MartÃnez Urreaga, points out that the results obtained so far indicate that “the properties and benefits of biobased materials from renewable sources are adequate to replace plastics traditional in many applications, although there is room for improvementâ€.
An advantage of biobased to reduce environmental impact is that they have less carbon footprint than conventional ones. In addition, they are usually biodegradable, although Professor MartÃnez Urreaga warns that “in accelerated tests in laboratories these materials biodegrade quickly, but when tested in a river, the sea or on land this does not happen fast enough”. On the other hand, he points out that “biobased products also have additives that could cause some type of toxicity, and this has not yet been studied sufficiently.”
Another positive fact from the research is that many of the biobased products can be recycled and reused. This means, according to JoaquÃn MartÃnez, “a more interesting end-of-life scenario than composting or burning”, and remember that this type of waste “cannot be left on the ground or in the sea either, it must be managed properly”. In this sense, it is important to know that they have to go to the organic waste container and in no case to the plastic one.
The Bio-Plastics Europe project has shown that the most appropriate uses of biobased materials are tableware, agricultural films, small toys, and boxes and containers for food. However, Professor MartÃnez acknowledges that “even if its development speeds up, it will not be able to fully replace conventional plastic”. And it is that the production of biobased products is more expensive and the raw material is insufficient, as it is a priority to allocate the edible biomass to food.
