Traditional polymer manufacturing processes heavily rely on fossil fuels as feedstock, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and the depletion of finite resources.  

The utilisation of biomass in the plastics sector has evolved to offer sustainable alternatives to conventional fossil-based materials. By leveraging biogenic feedstock, the industry can reduce its environmental impact and promote circularity.  

However, the complexity of value chains or the level of scale currently often doesn’t allow for a fully segregated production using biogenic feedstock. In these cases, the mass balance approach can help to increase the amount of biobased carbon in the loop and accelerate the transition to a more sustainable and carbon neutral production.  

In line with ISO 22095, the mass balance approach is a chain of custody model in which materials or products with a set of specific characteristics are mixed according to defined criteria with materials or products without that set of specific characteristics. In the case of the biomass mass balance methodology, these characteristics refer to the biobased nature of the feedstock used for the chemical building block production.  

It is essential to make accurate product claims about biobased content to avoid misinformation and gr