Abstract
As global plastic pollution is gaining increased attention, the use of bio-based plastics, especially in the food packaging sector, is growing in popularity. While this move is regarded as a solution to plastic pollution, it may shift or create detrimental impacts elsewhere in the production, consumption, management system, a possibility that is underexplored. The aim of the present study is to identify the potential challenges and trade-offs associated with the introduction of bio-based plastics in the food packaging industry, and highlight issues relevant to policy and decision-making processes. We employ a whole system approach to review the literature and assess holistically the performance of bio-based plastics, which looks at the entire lifecycle of bio-based plastic packaging (i.e. production, consumption, management) and considers wider aspects in the environmental, economic, social and technical sustainability domains. Based on our findings, we developed, and present herein, a sustainability decision matrix, a novel guiding tool, which can provide important insights into the potential impacts of the introduction of larger amount of bio-based plastic food packaging in the future and support decision-making processes. In conclusion, our preliminary high-level assessment of the bio-based plastics production, use and management system clearly reveals a number of blind-spots across the entire system that are currently ignored by the use of single-dimensional approaches. This highlights that the sustainability assessment of specific bio-based polymers requires thorough and further research that takes into account the type of feedstock, infrastructure availability, and interactions between sustainability domains, to ensure that the substitution of petrochemical-based plastics with bio-based alternatives in food packaging sector will not lead to unintended consequences.
Highlights
The size of the food packaging market is expected to rise from 303.3 to 456.6 USD billion over the period 2019e2027, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2% (GVR, 2020), with plastics being the most prevalent packing materials after paper and cardboard
By focusing on all stages of bioplastics lifecycle, from feedstock extraction to EoL management, we identify the challenges and trade-offs associated with the use of bio-based plastics along the entire food packaging value chain
Replacing petrochemical-based with bio-based plastics is still in its infancy, and comparing the two materials on the basis of selected metrics can lead to misleading interpretations
Summary
The size of the food packaging market is expected to rise from 303.3 to 456.6 USD billion over the period 2019e2027, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.2% (GVR, 2020), with plastics being the most prevalent packing materials after paper and cardboard The total amount of mismanaged plastics to have entered the earth’s oceans is estimated anywhere between 0.5 and 12.7 million metric tonnes (Mt) (Jambeck et al, 2015; Tramoy et al, 2019), and the scale and intensity of plastic pollution appears to be caused largely by plastic packaging waste that is accidentally, deliberately, illegally or uncontrollably released to the environment (Iacovidou et al, 2020). This has driven demand for new and innovative packaging solutions. Current commercial applications and future trends of different types of food packaging technologies have been described in (Han et al, 2018)
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