Eco-Efficiency Assessment of Bioplastics Production Systems and End-of-Life Options

Abstract

Bioplastics demand has been increased globally due to concerns regarding environmentally friendly consumption and production. Polylactic acid (PLA), polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), and polybutylene succinate (PBS) are promising bioplastics with bio-based feedstocks and property of biodegradability. They are produced by bacterial fermentation of sugars from carbohydrate sources. With flexibility in their properties, PLA, PHAs, and PBS can potentially substitute conventional plastics such as polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS). This study aims at evaluating the environmental and economic sustainability of bioplastics production together with end-of-life (EOL) options. The combination of environmental and economic indicators, eco-efficiency (E/E), was selected to investigate the performance of PLA, PHAs, and PBS from sugarcane and cassava in comparison with PP. The environmental impacts were determined using life cycle assessment. The product cost was used to represent the economic value. The E/E results showed that the environmental and economic sustainability could be enhanced with 100% mechanical recycling of all kinds of studied plastics. It is also important to highlight that mechanical recycling showed a better performance in terms of E/E than composting of bioplastics.

Review of recent advances in the biodegradability of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) bioplastics and their composites

“…Although some PHAs are more ductile as their chain length increases, [77][78][79] the cost of PHAs is significantly higher than that of conventional plastics and other bio-based biodegradable plastics. 80 While incorporation of petro-based biodegradable polymers is a potential solution to maintain the biodegradable properties of PHAs, the result- ing blends become less environmentally sustainable due to petroleum usage. For example, to make PLA more flexible, it is blended with PBAT and marketed as Ecovio by BASF.…”

A Review of Property Enhancement Techniques for Carrageenan-based Films and Coatings

“…In general, cost effectiveness is the main hurdle to be overcome for the development of bio-based plastic materials through to the commercialization stage (Mekonnen, Mussone, Khalil & Bressler, 2013) since production costs are generally more expensive than those of petroleum-based plastics (Changwichan, Silalertruksa & Gheewala, 2018;Song, Murphy, Narayan & Davies, 2009). Nonetheless, some unique properties of bio-based plastic materials may allow for future cost reductions, particularly in the end-of-life phase where bio-based materials can be more cost effective with regard to waste disposal management (van den Oever, Molenveld, van der Zee & Bos, 2017).…”

Biorefineries for Sustainable Food-Fuel-Fibre Production: Towards a Circular Economy

“…The average production data for sugarcane cultivation were collected from about 800 farmers and sugarcane milling from 20 sugar factories in Thailand [1]. The data for PLA production was from the literature [4,5] The second biorefinery chain studied is that of oil palm ( Fig. 2).…”