The Ellen MacArthur Foundation announced the winners of its $1 million Circular Materials Challenge at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The winners will join a 12-month accelerator programme working with experts to make their innovations marketable at scale. Among the winners are a number of innovative biopolymers and applications for bioplastics, including EUBP [...]
Companies in the food sector are increasingly looking for alternatives to conventional plastic packaging to reduce their CO2 footprint and are switching to packaging solutions made from renewable raw materials. A team at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands is studying the perceptions of bio-based packaging among consumers and aims to give manufacturers [...]
Non-biodegradable cotton buds prohibited in Italy from 2019: Italy will be the first country to ban non-biodegradable plastic cotton buds as of 2019. The Italian parliament adopted a proposal on 19 December 2017 to only allow the production and sale of cotton buds that are biodegradable and compostable according to the European standard EN [...]
Mazda teams with Mitsubishi Chemical to develop bio-based engineering plastic grade: Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. and Mazda have jointly developed a new grade of Durabio, a bio-derived polycarbonate engineering plastic suitable for molding large cosmetic automotive parts. Durabio is based partially on isosorbide, which in turn is derived from sorbitol, a widely available natural feedstock. [...]
In each issue of the Bioplastics Bulletin, we present 5 facts about a member of European Bioplastics. This month, Janice Li, CEO of JinHui ZhaoLong shares some information on one of the leading producers of biodegradable plastics in China. 5 facts about JinHui ZhaoLong, China Janice Li, CEO of JinHui ZhaoLong JinHui [...]
As we face increasing resource scarcity, we also throw away valuable resources each day in the form of waste. Such waste does not only impact ecosystems, it also signals a lost opportunity to draw more from available resources. In many cases, these waste materials could be reused to limit the stress on natural resources.Secondary materials [...]
The new German packaging law (Verpackungsgesetz, effective from January 2019, we reported earlier this year) includes provisions under which the participation fees for packaging shall be adapted in order to incentivise the use of recycled and renewable materials. The consequential increase in bio-based plastic packaging and the expected rise of new types of materials [...]
Oxo statement, New Plastics Economy, 2017 Oxo-degradable plastics are being produced and sold in many countries, with society being led to believe they safely biodegrade in nature. Yet significant evidence suggests oxo-degradable plastics do not safely biodegrade but fragment into small pieces, contributing to microplastics pollution. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics [...]
With growing market volumes of innovative bio-based and biodegradable plastics such as PLA (polylactic acid), the recycling of these materials is becoming a more viable option. We therefore spoke to Steve Dejonghe from Looplife Polymers Site, a recycler in Belgium that already successfully recycles PLA for a number of industrial projects, about the recyclability [...]
Photo Lars Borger, Head of Product Marketing – Emerging Businesses at Neste (Suisse) SA In each issue of the Bioplastics Bulletin, we present 5 facts about a member of European Bioplastics. This month, Lars Borger, Head of Product Marketing – Emerging Businesses at Neste shares some information on one of the worlds [...]