Bioplastics: Their Advantages and Concerns

Yusuf Sarkingobir; Abdulmudalib Abdullahi Lawal

Abstract

It is now well-known that plastic is everywhere you go. Plastic is characterized with threats to humanity and ecosystem. It contributes significant amount of greenhouse gases which trigger climate change, it accumulates and harm the animals and plants. Thus, there is need to search for an alternative plastic form to displace the conventional plastics. Presently, bioplastic is the identified possible alternative to conventional plastics at hand. The objective of this paper was to identify the advantages and concerns pertaining bioplastics. Definition of plastics, statement of problems, definition of bioplastics, advantages of bioplastics, and concerns about bioplastics were mentioned. Bioplastics are diverse group of new sets of plastics that are produced from renewable sources such as crops or plants and are biodegradable within short time range. There are different types such as starch-based, cellulose-based, aliphatic polyesters, organic polyethylene, protein-based etc. Their expected distinguishing properties are ecofriendly, biodegradable, compostable, and recyclable among others. Many concerns are attached to bioplastics including poor awareness about bioplastics among consumers, high cost of production, ability to incite used of more insecticides and chemicals, often low mechanical strength, may elicit food insecurity through excessive use of crops etc. Meanwhile, the current bioplastics production is around 1%, but projections show that it has higher production rate compared to the conventional ones. There are indeed potential promising features of bioplastics (such as biodegradability, lack of toxicity), and there exist concerns pertaining bioplastics.

Abstract

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