Bio-based Plastics - A Building Block for the Circular Economy?

authored by

Sebastian Spierling, Carolin Röttger, Venkateshwaran Venkatachalam, Marina Mudersbach, Christoph Herrmann, Hans Josef Endres

Abstract

Bio-based plastics have been identified as a promising alternative to conventional plastics with regards to finite fossil resources and climate change. With emerging novel bio-based plastics and 70% of its market share in short life cycle packaging applications, the end-of-life options (recycling, anaerobic and aerobic digestion, energy recovery etc.) as well as the resource circulation have been moved into the spotlight and have to be assessed. This paper will provide an insight into the bio-based plastics in the context of circular economy and gives an overview on its status and potential future development. The focus is set on the assessment of the potential environmental impacts of the different end-of-life options and resource circulation of bio-based plastics with the help of life cycle assessment.

External Organisation(s)

University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover (HsH)
Technische Universität Braunschweig

Type

Conference article

Journal

Procedia CIRP

Volume

69

Pages

573-578

No. of pages

6

ISSN

2212-8271

Publication date

2018

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Control and Systems Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2017.11.017 (Access: Open)