European Bioplastics Con­fer­ence con­firms bioplastics make sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tions to the EU’s ambi­tious cli­mate goals

In his open­ing remarks, François de Bie, Chair­man of European Bioplastics (EUBP), began by giv­ing a clear answer to the over­arch­ing con­fer­ence ques­tion about the role of bioplastics with­in the European Green Deal. ​“There are many fields of inter­ac­tion between the European Commission’s Green Deal and bioplastics where our industry can make sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tions towards help­ing achieve the European Union’s ambi­tious cli­mate goals”, said de Bie. ​“Bioplastics are part of the solu­tion needed to fix the issue that we have with plastics today”, he con­tin­ued, refer­ring to the chal­lenges caused by plastic waste. The var­ied two-day con­fer­ence pro­gramme, which examined key issues along the bioplastics value chain, strongly rein­forced his state­ment. In ten dif­fer­ent ses­sions, which included an excit­ing key­note and present­a­tions as well as lively pan­el dis­cus­sions, over 40 speak­ers and mod­er­at­ors focused on the con­tri­bu­tion that bio-based and bio­de­grad­able and com­postable plastics can make to achieve a cir­cu­lar economy. 

In a pre-recor­ded address, Kes­tutis Sadauskas, Dir­ect­or for Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy and Green Growth at the European Commission’s DG Envir­on­ment, said ​“While bio-based and bio­de­grad­able and com­postable plastics can be part of the solu­tion, they also present cer­tain chal­lenges. The feed­back received tells us a policy frame­work is needed”. The sub­sequent policy ses­sion went on to dis­cuss bioplastics’ role in achiev­ing Europe’s Green Deal object­ives by focus­sing on key pro­cesses, such as the frame­work for bioplastics and the Pack­aging and Pack­aging Waste Directive. 

Fur­ther con­fer­ence ses­sions high­lighted new oppor­tun­it­ies for com­postable plastics and dis­cussed their per­form­ance in dif­fer­ent open envir­on­ments. New European Bioplastics mar­ket data, based on research from the nova-insti­tute, gave a very pos­it­ive out­look for bioplastics pro­duc­tion, which is expec­ted to more than triple with­in the next five years with a growth rate of over 200 per­cent. The res­ults cor­res­pond to the industry lead­ers’ per­spect­ives on bioplastics shared dur­ing the con­fer­ence as well as to the latest insights that were provided from emer­ging mar­kets, such as tex­tiles, pack­aging and automotive. 

Dur­ing the ses­sion on com­mu­nic­at­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity of bio-based plastics, par­ti­cipants fol­lowed a lively dis­cus­sion on sus­tain­ab­il­ity, includ­ing the res­ults of a study developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) assess­ing the Life Cycle Ana­lys­is (LCA) of altern­at­ive feed­stock for plastics. This coin­cided with the pub­lic­a­tion of a pos­i­tion by the European Bioeconomy Alli­ance cri­ti­cising the meth­od­o­logy for favour­ing fossil-based over bio-based plastics. 

This year, bioplastics’ lead­ing busi­ness and net­work­ing plat­form was held in a hybrid format attract­ing over 320 par­ti­cipants. Around 140 par­ti­cipants atten­ded in per­son, while the oth­er attendees were able to fol­low and act­ively engage online. At the con­fer­ence exhib­i­tion, around 20 com­pan­ies and insti­tu­tions show­cased the high diversity of new products, mater­i­als, and applic­a­tions. Innov­a­tion also requires research – thus the con­fer­ence also included a poster exhib­i­tion with fif­teen dif­fer­ent uni­ver­sit­ies and research insti­tutes present­ing bioplastics-related projects.