US - As a non-fossil fuel derived material, bioplastics now has the opportunity to go mainstream according to Daniel Gilliland, Business Development Director of Lowell, Ma.-based Tellis, a  bioscience material manufacturer of Mirel. 

Gilliland said that the increase in oil prices has helped made bioplastics more appealing to the masses. “When the price of oil passed US$90,” he explained, “Bioplastics began to loose its historical price disadvantage and become a serious consideration for packaging and many other durable applications.”

While bioplastic may have a competitive cost advantage over conventional fossil-fuel plastics the industry still has to come to grips with issues which stand to hold it back both in terms of public perception and technical performance. But, Gilliland said, issues such as compostablilty give bioplastics an additional advantage, particularly when the consumer is more environmentally conscious.

Cosmetic appeal
An example of a fully compostable package would be Mirel’s PLA based cosmetic case which can be fully dissolved in the ocean in approximately 90 days with no industrial composting process.  

According to Gilliland, “Since the material is made by an organic microbe similar to those found in nature, it will biodegrade in a wide range of environments; home composting, it will degrade in soil, microbes naturally resident in the soil will colonize the plastic and consume it.

“It will also biodegrade in the ocean, Some people have trouble with that concept, since the general perception is that biodegradability is similar to dissolving the material in water.

“That is not the science behind it. Biodegradables are consumed by microbes.”

A Mirel evaluation study took a 1mm thick cosmetic compact case, (see photo) with all the look, feel and functionality of an up market cosmetic package, and placed it in the sea where it was simply observed.

Time lapse photographs taken over the 90 day trial period show that by the end of the test the shiny black bioplastic cosmetic case has almost completely been degraded.

Since the degradation process is a microbial function, in a parallel test a duplicate compact was put in a dishwasher and washed through 100 cycles. There was no degradation and the compact remained as shiny and black as it was before the first wash.

“The required microbe are not present in tap or dish water in sufficient quantity to trigger a degradation reaction,” said Gilliland.