Addressing Stakeholder Concerns Regarding the Effective Use of Bio-Based and Biodegradable Plastics

Abstract

Bio-based and biodegradable materials have the potential to replace traditional petroleum-based plastics across a range of products and contribute to a more circular economy. However, the uptake of these materials will not succeed unless consumers, manufacturers, and regulators are convinced of their efficacy. Investigating performance and safety concerns put forward by academic and non-academic communities, this paper assesses whether these concerns are being adequately addressed by current policy and regulation. In addition, measures to overcome significant concerns are developed through a series of stakeholder engagement events, informed by the Prospex-CQI-and STIR methodology. Discussions across the stakeholder engagement events have highlighted several concerns that create barriers to market up-take of bio-based and biodegradable plastic products, including the continued confusion regarding terminology and resultant communication, difficulties in navigating the plethora of documents related to safety, the appropriateness of safety documents when applied to new products, and the overall suitability and sustainability of such materials as an alternative to traditional plastics. To overcome these concerns, a series of recommendations for research, policy, and practice are made with respect to the following key areas of concern: regulation and legislative instruments, material quality and performance, market penetration and availability, waste management infrastructure, sourcing and supply chain, communication and information provision, and material health and safety.

The imperative of communication signals in boosting business strategies of the bioplastic packaging industry

“…When the packaging information is not easily understood, the consumer is confused (Ottoni et al, 2018). Others also revealed unclear communication regarding the material's source and disposal procedure (Fletcher et al, 2021).…”

“…'ready' and 'inherent'. For the majority of consumers, those various terms are not sufficiently clear (Allison et al, 2021;Fletcher et al, 2021). Further, this can lead to consumer uncooperativeness in sorting the solid waste (Ottoni et al, 2018).…”

“…Consumer confusion and misunderstanding of the message from the companies are also partly responsible for the slow uptake of bioplastic packaging (Fletcher et al, 2021;Keränen et al, 2021).…”

“…• Positive perception in biobased packaging. Those who have not yet switched are planning to switch in the future • Have information about its packaging biodegradability (Blesin et al, 2017; Tudu & Yadav, 2019) • Leveraging packaging compostability with the certified label (Bhagwat et al, 2020;Goel et al, 2021) • Indication of misleading biodegradability claims (Goel et al, 2021;Nazareth et al, 2019;Vaverková et al, 2014) • Unfamiliar with materials and labels Filho et al, 2021) • Confused about various biodegradability terms (Fletcher et al, 2021;Philp et al, 2013) • Cannot distinguish between fossil-based and biobased plastics (Alaerts et al, 2018) • Cannot distinguish the misleading claims (Allison et al, 2021;Fletcher et al, 2021) • Lack of knowledge of how to properly dispose of bioplastics waste (Ansink et al, 2022;Taufik et al, 2020) • Believe plastics should be recycled (Taufik et al, 2020) • Litter due to a wrong understanding of biodegradability (Bhagwat et al, 2020) the signalling environment is the surrounding in which the signalling process occurs (Block et al, 2018;Fan et al, 2021). These elements correspond well with the communication process that has been described previously in Section 4 in which the sender (e.g., firms) is the signaller, the message is the signal, the receiver is the consumer, and the channel or medium is the signalling environment.…”

3D printing of polylactic acid: recent advances and opportunities

“…Although the importance of the image has been shifted from biodegradable to bio-based sourcing, bioplastics are still searching for a stable foothold. The bioplastics industry remains a youthful and emerging industry, with numerous opportunities [ 38 ]. Therefore, this review article deals with different uses of biopolymers in 3D printing (3DP) especially those that use PLA filaments in extrusion-based 3DP technologies in particular in the decade forward with tack attention towered the biosafety profile and biocompatibility.…”