Materials News
Bioplastics: moderating the winds of climate change Producing and using renewably sourced materials such as bioplastics is a workable solution to put the brakes on the worsening climate change, says Angelica Buan in this report.
B
eyond the erratic weather patterns that are affecting agricultural outputs or the rising temperatures that are weighing on health and safety, climate change is also associated with global hunger and poverty. The United Nations (UN) in a new report warns about the impact of accelerating climate change on the planet. UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, was also quoted saying that the earth’s temperature aberration could “push more than 120 million more people into poverty by 2030 and will have the most severe impact in poor countries, regions, and the places poor people live and work“. Unfortunately, climate change has gotten worse and is already irreversible, according to the fifth assessment report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Reducing emission targets is a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C, above pre-industrial levels, or keeping it at 1.5°C and this may require tremendous efforts to achieve. Too much carbon dioxide (CO2) is believed to significantly contribute to climate change. Reducing CO2 emissions, however, is doable and can be achieved within a bioeconomy framework, according to the European Commission. It says that value-added products, such as food, feed, biobased products and bioenergy can be produced from renewable biological resources, or derived from these resources or from waste streams.
Too much carbon dioxide (CO2) is believed to significantly contribute to climate change
6
AUGUST 2019
Bioplastics as a building block of the bioeconomy Bioplastics, derived from plants and renewably sourced materials are taking the place of fossil fuel-based plastics in a variety of applications, such as food and personal care packaging, device enclosures, personal effects and more. Bioplastics represent a robust segment in the packaging materials aggregate. According to a new report by Smithers Pira, The Future of Bioplastics for Packaging to 2024, in the packaging segment alone, the global bioplastic packaging market is expected to reach US$8.8 billion over the forecast period from US$4.4 billion in 2019. The growth is driven by the demand for sustainability from leading packaging converters and food and beverage brands. Naturally occurring polymers, such as starch and cellulose, will see significant extra demand for use in degradable plastics packaging applications, the report said. Advances in R&D in the area of green chemicals, specifically in their potential applications, are also generating growth for bioplastics, with polylactic acid (PLA), bio-PET, and bio-polyolefins being the primary packaging plastics synthesised from biologically produced monomers. Moreover, the field of biotechnology will play a key role in bioplastics development. The forecast period will be characterised by continued fermentation of new technologies and companies springing up, Smithers Pira reported. Enzymes: essential catalysts from plants Cellulose and lignin from plants are said to be “the most abundant biopolymers on earth”, but they are not easy to extract to produce bioplastics. Enzymes, despite their nano size, act as an important catalyst to harness the potential of these biopolymers to create valuable materials. A team of international experts in structural biology, biochemistry, quantum chemistry and synthetic biology at the University of Portsmouth (UK), University of Montana State (US), University of Georgia (US), University of Kentucky, and University of California (US), and two US national laboratories, US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Oak Ridge, engineered enzymes to convert plant waste into plastics, nylon and chemicals. The newly engineered enzyme is active on lignin, a main component of plants.