A very successful second edition of the Bioplastics Week, organised by the US Plastics Industry Association’s (PLASTICS) bioplastics division, took place on 21-25 August. Bioplastics Week is an annual campaign – driven on social media using the hashtag #BioplasticsWeek – created to educate people about the many benefits of bioplastics by increasing their visibility.

This year’s Bioplastics Week featured a great many social media posts, infographics, videos, and blog posts about bioplastics. Around 300 tweets, facebook and linkedin posts used the hashtag #bioplasticsweek, reaching an audience of over 330,000 people. More than 115 people participated in the campaign with Italy being the second most active participating country after the US.

PLASTICS released a number of short educational videos tackling some of the most common misconceptions about bioplastics, such as performance, feedstock, and recycling.

Many other partners from all over the world involved in the bioplastics industry contributed engaging and informative content. European Bioplastics (EUBP) shared a series of new infographics on bioplastics during the week, which received a great deal of attention.

2017 Innovation in Bioplastics Award

The winner of the 2017 Innovation in Bioplastics Award, an honour that goes to companies applying bioplastics to innovative, purposeful product design, was also announced during Bioplastics Week on 25 August. DuPont Industrial Biosciences and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) won the award for developing a method to produce furan dicarboxylic methyl ester (FDME), a biobased monomer, from fructose derived from corn starch. The new FDME-producing technology is more sustainable and results in higher yields and lower energy and capital expenditures than traditional conversion methods. Biobased FDME has the potential to replace petroleum-based materials in many applications with high performance, renewable materials in industries like packaging, textiles and plastics engineering.

To see all the great things that have been shared during Bioplastics Week 2017, have a look at the hashtag #bioplasticsweek on twitter.