EU bio-based, biodegradable & compostable plastics framework: can recommendations help control pollution?

By Samy Porteron

By Sabela González

This week, the European Commission is expected to publish a set of non-binding guidelines about how the market should use bio-based, biodegradable, and compostable plastics.

First of all, let’s be clear: ‘bio-plastic’ is still… plastic. Bio-based plastics are simply sourced from biological resources rather than fossil material. Biodegradable plastic is most often fossil-based and relies on virgin materials. Even when designed to be biodegradable, these plastics often include the same toxic chemicals as conventional non-biobased and non-biodegradable plastic.

Unnecessary plastics, especially short-lived single-use items, must be eliminated. As for the remaining plastics, careful consideration is required to ensure they contribute to a circular plastics economy. Bio-based, biodegradable, and compostable plastics should be used for niche applications only – and have an extremely limited role in the economy.

To crack down on this kind of plastics, governments worldwide must introduce clear frameworks so as not to perpetuate linear consumption patterns. 

The EU is just about to take a small step in this direction. What should the European Commission’s proposal include to truly contribute to a more sustainable and circular plastics economy?

We need a boost to circularity – and keep the use of virgin materials under control

The fact that bio-based plastics are of renewable origin is often conflated with circularity and sustainability, even for single-use applications. However, the production of bio-based plastics is not a sustainable process per se – ‘renewable’ does not mean ‘green’, especially when intensive agriculture is involved. Virgin biomass demand is already beyond sustainable limits: it has severe environmental impacts on land and water, and depletes resources such as soils.

Aiming to control biomass demand, the EU’s new policy framework should continue to enforce circularity principles enshrined in the waste hierarchy. First, prevention, then reuse and, as a last resort, recycling – in this order of priority.

We need to stop thinking of plastics’ biodegradability as something desirable

Biodegradable plastics still entail health and environmental risks. First, they biodegrade or disintegrate in specific environments and conditions only, which the existing test methods do not accurately reflect. Second, they can migrate from one natural environment to another. For example, a supposedly biodegradable bag can be transported from soil to freshwater… and stay there for a very long time without degrading – just as any other type of plastic would.

To make matters worse, consumers are often confused by labels and wrongly dispose of their ‘industrial compostable plastic’ in nature or in their home compost – where such plastics will barely biodegrade. On top of this, their separate constituents (e.g. chemical additives) may not biodegrade at all. In some cases, their toxicity can even be greater than in the case of conventional plastics.

In view of all these factors, the EU should acknowledge that biodegradable plastics have a very limited role to play.

We need to bust the myth of climate and sustainability aspects of ‘bio’ products…

The EU, and governments worldwide, should strictly narrow down claims related to ‘bio-plastics’.

The overall impacts of bio-based, biodegradable and compostable plastics must reflect an honest picture: considering them ‘carbon-‘ or ‘material-‘ neutral is dangerous. The production, processing and transport of such plastics result in carbon emissions and impact ecosystems.

Claims about the bio-based nature of certain plastics, or their biodegradability, mislead consumers into thinking they are better than conventional plastics and will simply disappear after use. Alas, biodegradable and compostable plastics are non-reusable, short-lived and usually not mechanically recycled. As such, they should not be considered a desirable alternative to so-called ‘conventional single-use plastics’.

…and better standards

Standards determine the conditions needed for biodegradation and composting, or to assess the sustainability of bio-based plastics, but they are not sufficiently ambitious to assure enough environmental protection.

In particular, the European Commission must ensure that standards better reflect real-life conditions needed for biodegradation, such as heat, humidity or UV light. While a wide array of standards exists to specify these conditions, they present considerable shortcomings, which can lead to environmental pollution through the accumulation of non-biodegradable components in the environment.  

The European Commission should recognise once and for all that designing products to be thrown into the environment looks more like littering than a strategy to manage resources sustainably.