40% of all plastics consumed in the EU is for packaging. Without action the region is on track for a further 46% increase in plastic packaging waste.
Rapid, wide scale phase-out of fossil plastic partly depends on cost-effective alternatives like bioplastics made from organic waste or plant biomass. Yet although the sector is growing, these renewable materials still account for only about 1% of the global polymer market. The big reason for this is that bioplastics tend to remain more expensive than fossil plastics.
The fastest way to lower bioplastics production costs and increase adoption is bold government legislation. This must do two things at once: reduce fossil plastic use and grow the sector producing alternative materials. Bans should target high-volume uses where non-fossil based options exist. This would force companies to eliminate material where possible and to adopt lower impact alternatives for essential uses.
A prime area for legislative intervention is single use plastics. Although a lot of current material usage can be eliminated, some functions like food and medical storage demand extra materials for protective covering. This means fossil plastics bans must be accompanied by legislation that lowers the cost of alternative materials that are equally durable and hygienic but keep fossil fuels in the ground.
EU policy for bioplastics: what has been done?
Since 2021, the EU’s Single-Use Plastics Directive has banned the sale of single-use products like cotton swabs, plastic cutlery, and plates, drinking straws, stirrers and balloon holders, as well as cups and food containers for immediate consumption made of polystyrene and products made of oxo-degradable plastics.
There are plans to further this legislation by imposing laws based around the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility – making plastics producers pick up the costs of recycling, recovery, and waste disposal.
This single use plastics ban flowed from a 2018 EU plastics strategy, which also laid out proposals for future policies that actively support bio-based biodegradable and compostable plastics. The EU made progress on this in November 2022 when the Commission released a future policy framework specifically concerning biobased, biodegradable and compostable plastic.
EU policy: what more could be done?
Overall, the strategy of the European Commission towards establishing a circular economy has focused on encouraging recyclable plastics and recycling materials, whether they are made from plants or from fossil chemicals. There has been an absence of strong policies to actively stimulate demand for the bioplastics industry.
For example, under the November 2022 proposal to strengthen packaging and packaging waste legislation, a target was set to reduce general packaging waste by 15% per capita by 2030 in every member state through recycling. There is no such quantitative target to actively increase demand for bio-based or biodegradable plastics.
Recycling, whether for materials made from renewable feedstocks or petrochemicals, is undoubtedly an important element in sustainable economies. This is because recycling cuts virgin material extraction, which always puts additional pressures on the environment whether it involves plant-based or fossil based inputs.
Yet more support is needed to actively support novel materials – especially biomaterials that degrade easily in natural environments, otherwise known as compostable or home-compostable bioplastics. ‘Home-compostable’ bioplastics break down into benign compounds wherever they end up in contrast to most bioplastics on the market today that degrade rapidly and safely only inside specially equipped industrial facilities.
Many European startups are offering compostable biomaterials, usually made from organic waste or low-input algae feedstocks. Compostable bioplastics like this are especially suited to single use or short term applications like food packaging and product wrapping.
As proven, technically mature solutions that offer the same or nearly the same functionalities as single use fossil plastics without the high carbon costs, compostable bioplastics is an area ready to benefit from targeted legislation that lowers price points, supports scaling, and boosts uptake.
At the same time, compostable bio-based materials are not suited to certain heavy-duty applications. Plastics used in industry, for example, demand durability. For these materials to become more widespread, the EU would have to strengthen policies around the collection of these materials and expand the capacity of waste processing facilities that can break them down for re-use.
A ‘green taxonomy’ for bioplastics: the first step to targeted sector subsidies
Part of the reason why the EU has been cautious in throwing its legislative weight behind growing the bio-based materials is that how they are made and whether they can be recycled has a massive impact on whether they hold net gains for the environment.
While recycling has been on the policy agenda for a long time and its environmental benefits are clear, bioplastics are relatively newer environmental technologies. The best standards around and methods for measuring their impacts are more uncertain.
Because bioplastics can be so variable in their carbon and ecological impacts, there is a need to construct a rigorous network of standards and regulations before any policy setting up green investment into the sector. The 2022 EU policy framework on biobased, biodegradable and compostable plastics carefully laid out all the issues that need addressing.
One key prerequisite for biobased subsidies is a stringent taxonomy ranking products in the terms of the environmental benefits they bring. A ranked taxonomy of bioplastics would indicate which kinds of materials and feedstocks deserve targeted support from the EU and which should not.
For this to be viable, we would also need standardised methodologies for measuring the environmental impacts of different bioplastics over their whole product life-cycle. This way, producers would know the kinds of scientific evidence they must produce in order to receive financial support.
Robust and transparent methodologies for environmental assessments will feed into consumer labelling that make it easier for consumers to compare the environmental costs of bioplastics. The EU said that in future, biomaterials will need labels that indicate how long it would take to biodegrade and in what conditions: whether it needs industrial conditions or can break down easily anywhere.
A taxonomy of sustainable bioplastics would provide a massive boost to the bioplastics sector even before any subsidies come into force. The guidelines would provide investors and industry with much-needed certainty on the types of material likely to qualify under any future support scheme and to benefit from environmental policy-led increases in consumer demand. This should encourage more investment getting funnelled into select kinds of feedstocks and materials, focusing scaling efforts on products that will really make a difference.
Standard-setting for bioplastics
Many products on the mass market today sit in intricate ecosystems of standards and regulations indicating. Think of pharmaceutical products or children’s toys or food. This standard-setting work is even more critical when the product is geared towards meeting environmental protection goals. With the health of the planet hanging in the balance we cannot afford to use precious energy and materials on products that will not help in our efforts to consume more sustainably.
The European Technical Committee for Standardisation for biobased products (CEN/TC411) has been the fulcrum of EU efforts to define what exactly constitutes a sustainable bio-based product and how producers can prove their goods are green. In 2021, it released the first sustainability standards for the biobased sector. It includes details on consistent terminology, sampling, certification tools, bio-based content, methods for proper life cycle analysis, sustainability criteria for biomass used and for final products, and aspects where further harmonisation is needed.
Any future stimulus policies to scale bioplastics will likely target circular biobased materials. In the November 2022 EU proposal on packaging legislation, the EU said it wants to prioritise bio-based plastics made from waste byproducts – whether urban waste or from agricultural processing – rather than crops grown specifically for that purpose. This avoids using extra land and agricultural inputs which will further strain the environment for the purpose of making industrial goods.
Carbon taxes would push bioplastic prices down
Another EU strategy towards reducing plastics use is a so-called ‘plastic tax’. Since January 2021, every member state has had to contribute a certain amount to the EU based on the amount of non-recycled plastic packaging waste they produce.
This is an interesting policy because it tries to deter plastic use by putting a price on it. More importantly, it is also a step towards pushing up the costs of fossil plastics use, eroding its cost advantage over bioplastics.
The single most important factor in the adoption of any new product is price, assuming it performs all or nearly all the functions of the product being replaced. The most important determinant of price is the price of the raw material inputs: oil for fossil plastics and various types of biological feedstocks for bioplastics.
We know that the long-term cost of crude oil prices significantly influences bioplastic demand. As long as oil is cheap, bioplastics will be relatively more expensive with demand limited to small market segments willing or able to pay extra for products that harm the environment less. However, the closer a bioplastic comes to matching the physical performance of oil plastic, the more appealing it becomes once oil plastic prices increase.
There are two options here: to simply wait until prices for bioplastics feedstocks go down relative to petroleum feedstocks. Or, the government can use their powers to raise the prices of environmentally harmful products and expedite scaling in environmentally beneficial technologies.
A welcome policy intervention for the bio-based sector would be further EU-wide tax breaks for producers of materials with low carbon footprints. This would very rapidly crank up the price of cheap fossil plastics relative to renewable materials.
Prospects
European global market share in bioplastics is 25% meaning there is already a substantial industry in renewable materials that could be grown, scaled, and incorporated into environmental policies.
Bold national regulations can boost climate policy-relevant industries and markets rapidly. We have already seen proof of this in the Inflation Reduction Act in the US which has ramped up capacity in the renewable industries in the months after it was introduced: such that 66% of new EV jobs that came over the past 8 years came just in the time after it was introduced.
Similar gains could be replicated in the European bio-based sector. Yet for a scaled bioplastics industry to be meaningful from a climate change and ecological mitigation perspective, the EU will need to work out rigorous standards for measuring and proving the life-cycle impacts of these products – including the carbon released by giving over natural habitats to intensive feedstock cultivation.
Standards for a ‘green taxonomy’ of bioplastics would winnow out products that do not offer substantial environmental gains. However, these standards would protect the consumer from greenwashing claims while paving the way for serious policies that support sustainable bioplastics to scale and displace fossil plastics.
