Bioplastics and plastics recycling
We cannot imagine our daily life without plastics. Generally, the day starts and ends with a toothbrush, typically completely made of plastics. Plastics take over varying tasks, like packaging for the protection of food or medicine ensuring the products’ hygiene and durability. As plastics barely conduct heat, houses are isolated with corresponding insulating materials to avoid heat loss. Polymer components almost do not corrode, are light-weighted but durable and thus are resistant to many outside influences over a long period. Apparel made of synthetic fiber textiles or of synthetic fiber components can provide comfortable wearability properties as well as functionalities such as water repellency and/or breathability.
However, we should not oversee the disadvantages of polymers and their occurring hazards. Immediate advantageous properties, like outstanding durability, could be a tremendous disadvantage if it is disposed in nature. Then, polymers are only degraded extremely slowly in nature and will remain as waste for centuries to come. In addition, we can nowadays find nano plastic particles everywhere: added in toothpaste or detergents, to improve its cleaning impact, or in cosmetics to boost the covering power.
Biopolymers make the difference
Next to these environmental and health hazards, there remain other non-solved functionality deficiencies related to petro-chemical plastics. For instance, compound systems from different plastics are required to achieve varied barrier effects in packaging to protect food. These systems lead to a limited recyclability and lastly to a “downcycling”, as these materials, produced at great effort, cannot be separated at their end of life.
Therefore, it is important to substitute petro-chemical plastic products with environmentally friendly alternatives at large scale as soon as possible. These alternatives must ensure the positive application properties of plastic materials in daily use and must not lead to the mentioned, negative environmental impacts and health hazards. “Bioplastics” lend themselves as these alternatives due to their nearly similar characteristics, related material properties and manufacturing processes. On top of that, we can expect properties (e.g., barrier effects) of certain biopolymers that cannot be met by petro-chemical plastics. The most well-known, technically usable, bio-based polymers comprise polylactide (PLA), polybutyl-succinate (PBS), an polysaccharides like starch and polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA).
Networks
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BioPlastik
In the “BioPlastik” cooperation network, partners from industry and academia work together under the management of IBB Netzwerk GmbH. The…
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Plastics Recycling
With the newly established “Plastics Recycling” network, we would like to represent the entire value chain. Thus, among others, suppliers…
News
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Insempra completes $20 million financing to advance the development of next-generation bio-based ingredients
08.05.2024NewsSeries A investment round will accelerate Insempra’s market-first approach to developing superior, intrinsically sustainable ingredients for the beauty & food industries.
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14. — 15. November 2024 | London, UK
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Great news for our contribution to stop climate change! A project for the development of a food additive to reduce methane emission from ruminants is funded by the BMBF.
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Electrochaea sets new industry standard for resource-efficient bioreactor design
24.04.2024NewsBioCat bioreactor receives 2nd life task
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The food tech start-up BLUU Seafood is taking a further step towards market maturity in the production of cultured fish — and is opening its first pilot plant at its new headquarters in Hamburg.
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Xcellbio has developed the AVATAR incubator system for cell therapy R&D. Its latest platform, the AVATAR Foundry system is a cGMP cell therapy manufacturing platform that delivers novel…
Events
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28. ‐ 31. May 2024
POLYMERS 2024 — Polymers for a Safe and Sustainable Future
23.11.2023Events28. — 31. May 2024 | Athens
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02. ‐ 05. Jun 2024
6th International Conference on Functional Metagonomics
10.07.2023Events02. — 05.06.2024 | Skukuza, South Africa
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11. — 13.06.2024 | Siegburg/Cologne