There are published standards for life cycle assessments (LCA) that provide guidance on how to compare different polymers fairly with regard to their environmental impacts. However, the rules still leave sufficient room for manoeuvre to specify the methods by which such comparisons are to be carried out. The fact that there is still a [...]
(c) American Chemical Society Biodegradable polymers are often promoted as an environmental solution to plastic pollution. However, their degradation in managed and unmanaged environments is not always well understood. The authors of the study “Biodegradable plastic blends create new possibilities for end-of-life management of plastics but they are not a panacea for [...]
The European chemical industry faces enormous challenges to meet the climate goals set by the European Commission in the framework of the Paris Agreement. This agreement aims at keeping a global temperature rise below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C. In this context, the position paper [...]
The study Environmental deterioration of biodegradable, oxo-biodegradable, compostable, and conventional plastic carrier bags in the sea, soil, and open-air over a 3-year period carried out by Imogen E. Napper and Richard C. Thompson of the University of Plymouth, whose results were announced yesterday, intends to provide insights into the ‘environmental deterioration’ of plastic carrier [...]
The European Commission has published a new study Environmental impact assessments of innovative bio-based products. The study aims at providing science-based facts and evidences on the environmental impacts of bio-based products for comparison with petrochemical plastic counterparts, in order to support the future bioeconomy policy and decision-making at the EU level. The report concludes that [...]
The European Commission has delivered the report A circular economy for plastics, which provides research insights from EU-funded projects to support policy development and funding decisions. The objective is to foster the use of pastics that could circulate with full transparency at high-value usage, while minimising the risks to human health and the environment. The [...]
Nova-Institut, an independent research institute based in Germany, has carried out a sustainability study of bio-based raw materials for the chemical industry. The assessment analyses the strengths and weaknesses of sugar plants, starch plants, virgin wood as well as waste and residues for the production of bio-based chemicals. According to the results, first-generation fermentable sugar [...]
The recent study “Land use mediated GHG emissions and spillovers from increased consumption of bioplastics” published by the University of Bonn calls into question the contribution of bio-based plastics to climate change mitigation. Although the study describes that fossil-based plastics are responsible for 15 percent of the global CO2 emissions*, it fails to acknowledge [...]
Berlin, 16 August 2018 - Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) succeeded in an interdisciplinary study to demonstrate that soil microorganisms metabolically utilised the carbon in the PBAT polymer both for energy production and also to build up microbial biomass. The researchers used the biodegradable [...]
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 [...]
