3 major families of bioplastics:
Biobased materials
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Biodegradable
Biobased materials
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Non-degradable
Petroleum-based materials
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Biodegradable
Beyond their origin and end-of-life properties, bioplastics can be divided into two categories.
Indeed, some bioplastics are chemically similar to commonly used polymers. For example, a PE made from sugarcane (otherwise known as biobased PE ) and a PE conventionally obtained from fossil resources will have the same technical characteristics. The advantage of biobased PE is that it comes from a renewable resource rather than a fossil one. They can therefore immediately substitute their petrochemical equivalents without difficulty. This family includes only biobased, non-biodegradable polymers such as biobased PE, PET, PP, PA and TPU.
Apart from styrenics (PS, ABS), it is now possible to obtain almost all commodity polymers at least partially biobased (see origin of bioplastics).
In the second case, bioplastics have new chemical structures. Most of these are biodegradable polymers polymers, most of which are also at least partially biobased. The materials in this family have different properties, so they need to be selected according to the characteristics expected of the end product. Moreover, these materials are new on an industrial scale (most of them less than 10-20 years old) and therefore require research and development efforts in order to give them properties adapted to market expectations.
