Knowledge

Bio-based plastic (sometimes called bioplastic) is usually made from starch, vegetable fats and oils, agricultural waste and woodchips. This material is seen as eco-friendly, but in fact packaging and other items manufactured in this material still form part of the littering issue and there are also global concerns that land used to produce crops for processing into polymer should be growing food.

With the inclusion of certain additives, conventional plastic can be made to biodegrade at an accelerated rate; this material is often called ‘bio-degradable plastic’ but in reality, it usually requires treatment in specialised industrial composting facilities. Decomposition in the natural state does take place at a faster rate than standard plastics but nowhere near fast enough for these products to avoid becoming litter or polluting our oceans. Some ‘bio-degradable’ plastics also give off gas as they decompose, this is an undesirable characteristic with its own problems.

The main issue with ‘bio-degradable plastic’ is that products made from this material are indistinguishable from conventional plastic and once they find their way into feedstocks for recycling, their inclusion severely mitigates the effectiveness of the process and renders the whole batch fit for landfill only. This characteristic renders the material a threat to increasing the amount of recycling we can achieve.

Our belief is that the collection and reprocessing of conventional plastic waste for further use as a constituent in the manufacture of plastic packaging is the best way forward.