Plant-Based Bioplastics Provide Promising Alternative

Articles, Consumer Protection — By forcechange on December 26, 2008 11:53 am

Unless you’ve been to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market or are in the plastics industry, you are probably not familiar with the idea of plant-based plastic bags, cups, and utensils. 

Called “bioplastics,” these alternative materials are derived mostly from corn, but can also be based on other plants such as switch-grass, among others.  Similar to biofuels, bioplastics are intended to reduce our consumption of oil and to be more environmentally friendly than its petrochemical based competitor.  However, also like biofuels, there are some questions regarding their effectiveness in this regard.  

These questions are based upon the currently high costs to manufacture and recycle bioplastics.  Not all bioplastics can simply be thrown into a traditional compost heap or recycling plant.  The main component of many bioplastics is polylactide (PLA) which must be taken to a commercial composting plant or recycled separately from other plastics.  This adds an additional cost to the back-end of the product’s life.

And of course, there are the same criticisms of bioplastics that are also levied at biofuels.  Mainly, that the transformation of croplands to non-food related products has a whole slew of its own unintended consequences, such as higher food prices, deforestation, etc.

But like second generation biofuels, new methods of producing bioplastics are also being developed.  These methods, which use non-foodstuffs, like switch-grass, may be a promising solution. 

Of course, the best way for these bioplastics to compete (economically, at least) with petro-plastics is for the price of traditional plastic to be more accurately set.  All of the externalities surrounding oil based products, like pollution, climate change, and geopolitical costs, are not borne by the consumers of these products.  If these heavy costs were actually built into the price of products like plastics and gasoline through a petroleum tax, the bio-based alternatives would quickly become more financially completive.