- The use of the suffix Bio and greenwashing
- What are biodegradable and biocompostable products
- Biofuels
- Agricultural production for polymers and global food problems
Will compostable bioplastics be an alternative to traditional plastic?
Compostable bioplastics , of plant origin, seemed to be the panacea for all the ills attributed to plastic of fossil origin but, today, many doubts have arisen about their effectiveness and sustainability relating to the production models of the plant component.
There is great confusion on the market, also caused by the labels on products in which the suffixes "Bio", "Biodegradable", and "Biocompostable" abound, where the consumer is left confused and does not always understand the differences.
The phenomenon of greewashing is often based on this veiled ignorance, which makes a product seem ethically "green" when sometimes it isn't at all.
The products we find on store shelves with the biodegradable and compostable label are generally products that start from a vegetable raw material, such as corn starch, wheat, beetroot, sugar cane, tapioca and potatoes.
These natural elements, duly processed, can be transformed into polymers, comparable in quality, technical characteristics and workability to polymers of fossil origin which are not compostable.
In reality, the consumer must know that compostability , which is expressed on the packaging labels, mainly concerns an industrial transformation of the same and not the possibility of inserting it into the composter in the garden.
That of the raw material that constitutes biodegradable and compostable packaging is actually an excellent idea, as it would allow us to recover many packages that today are not recycled, or are recycled with little added value due to the food residues that remain inside of the packages.
But we must take a step back to see the sustainability of the supply chain of these compostable raw materials of plant origin.
The doubts that arise more and more concern the cultivation of vegetable products such as sugar cane, potatoes, corn, beets, wheat and many other products, which have a negative impact on the production of foodstuffs, on the occupation of arable land already put under pressure by the production of cereals for the meat industry, by the consumption of water, by the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and by deforestation to create new arable land.
Is it worth it?
According to the FAO report of July 2019, over 2 billion people, especially in low- and middle-income countries, do not have regular access to healthy, nutritious and sufficient food.
This requires a profound transformation of food systems to provide healthy, sustainably produced diets to the world's growing population.
The number of hungry people in the world in 2018 is approximately 821.6 million, divided as follows:
A UNICEF report highlights the limited progress made in combating the effects of child malnutrition on childhood development. In 2017, 151 million children under the age of five were affected by stunting due to malnutrition (stunting), compared to 165 million in 2012.
39% and 55% of all children affected by this form of delay live respectively in Africa and Asia.
The incidence of child wasting remains extremely high in Asia, where almost one in ten children under the age of five has a lower weight than expected for their height: ten times more than in Latin America and the Caribbean, where this form of malnutrition affects only 1 in 100 children.
The report brands as "shameful" the fact that one in three women of childbearing age in the world is affected by anemia, a circumstance which has serious consequences on health and development for both women themselves and their children.
No region on the planet has shown a decline in the spread of female anemia in recent years, and the incidence of the phenomenon among African and Asian women is almost triple that of North American women.
But if the increase in demand for biopolymers, biofuels and fodder for the meat industry must satisfy the increase of a growing population, year after year, agriculture will not be able to produce what the market requires to satisfy human dietary needs.
It should also be added that agriculture, due to climate change, is strictly dependent on meteorological conditions which are becoming increasingly unfavorable with an increase in desertification and plant resistance.
In this context, the discoveries of biopolymers are certainly a step forward in research, but if we were to think about replacing, even partially, the production of plastic with a bioplastic, whose raw materials derive from agricultural cultivation, I don't think it is a process in balance with global needs.
Category: news - plastic - circular economy - bio plastic
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