Today, biobased plastics are mostly made from carbohydrate-rich plants, such as corn or sugar cane, so called agro-based feedstock (20). Currently, agro-based generation feedstock is the most efficient feedstock to produce biobased plastics as it requires the least amount of land to grow on and produces the highest yields. The feedstock currently used to produce bioplastics relies on less than 0.02% of the global agricultural area – compared to 96% of the area used for pasture and the production of food and feed. Despite the predicted continued growth in the bioplastics market at the current stage of technological development, the share of global agricultural area needed to grow feedstock to produce biobased plastics will only slightly increase to still below 0.07% by 2028. This clearly demonstrates that there is no competition between food/feed and bioplastic production.
(20) Agro-based feedstock is often referred to as 1st generation feedstock.
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