BIOPLASTICS
Timeline
Testing Procedures
Issues
Environmental
Although, bioplastics are highly environmentally friendly compared to the petrochemical plastics, there are a few downsides that it possesses that renders it from becoming free of environmental impacts. For instance, crops that bioplastics come from, release carbon dioxide as they are being grown and turned into bioplastic, and add to the amount of pollutants in the environment from all the fertilizers and pesticides they use. Furthermore, bioplastic cannot decompose anywhere outside of a compost facilty. But the problem is, little number of countries or cities are equipped to have these facilities, so bioplastics end in landfills and recycling streams in the end. Once they are in there, they can cause contamination and release methane. [E.1]
Social
As more and more manufacturers convert to using crops for their products, they also bring a negative effect to society. For every crop used, that includes corn, wheat, potato, and sugar beet (first-generation feedstocks), they require an extensive amount of land to be produced, and that amount of land could be used for food to feed the billions of people in the world suffering from food shortages. As a result, the Bioplastic industry is causing the world’s food crisis level to increase by utilizing a good amount of agricultural land for feedstocks to produce their products, and helping to decrease the amount of land available for cultivation. [E.2]
Financial
Ever since bioplastic was introduced into the market, its cost has been preventing it from achieving global popularity. The reason to this is that, bioplastics are rather more expensive than petrochemical plastics by 20 to 100 percent. For instance, PLA is 20 to 50 percent more costly than most conventional plastic. The increase in cost is due to the complex chemical process involving the conversion of crops into the polymers for bioplastics, which take a lot of effort and time to do for manufacturers. [E.3]
Political
In the past, there have been terms like “biodegradable” that companies put on their products and materials that become misleading for consumers. Because of this, they believe that any bioplastic item thrown into the environment will eventually degrade, but that is not necessarily the case… Some bioplastics may or may not degrade based on their environment, which adds to the amount of litter in certain countries and states. Like in many states like California, laws and regulations have been passed to limit the use of these specific terms. [E.4]
