Land Use for Bioplastics

There is an ongoing public, political, and industrial debate, with wide-reaching implications, on the competition between food, animal feeds and industrial markets for agricultural raw materials. This has created a lot of confusion and insecurity within the bioplastics industry. The German automotive industry in particular has decided not to use bioplastics based on potential foodstuffs such as sugar, starch or edible oil. This article offers some basic facts for this debate, which will be back on the agenda as soon as the world economy recovers and food prices rise again. The bioplastics industry should be prepared for this debate.

Read full paper (Bioplastics Magazine, Issue 4, 2009)

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