TPS thermoplastic starch

TPS thermoplastic starch is the most important and widely used bioplastic. It is used in making capsule casings for pharmaceutical drugs. A common TPS is PSM plastarch material from corn; it biodegrades well in compost, wet soil, and water.

TPS is generally made into biodegradable bioplastic films, which are converted into shopping bags, bread bags, bait bags, over wrap, 'flushable' sanitary product backing material, and mulch film. They are also used for foamed starch loose fill packaging and injected moulded take-away containers (usually with the addition of glycerol as plasticizer and polyvinyl alcohol).

TPS blended with either PCL polycaprolactone or PVA polyvinyl alcohol yields such commercial bioplastics Mater-Bi (from Novamont, Italy) and Bioflex (from BioTech, Germany). Mater-Bi was used for biodegradable catering items and garbage bags during the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

More information at European Plastic Films and on Wikipedia.

Bioplastics

Bioplastics or organic plastics include all plastics derived from renewable plant sources, such as vegetable oil or corn starch, as opposed to petroplastics from fossil fuel sources. They are potentially biodegradable and compostable, and are now popularly used for disposable packaging (trays and containers for fruit, vegetables, eggs, meat; bottles for softdrinks and dairy products), disposable tableware (crockery, cutlery, drinkware, straws) as well as shopping bags.

Europe accounts for 60% of the biodegradable materials market. In Japan bioplastics are used not for biodegradable applications, but as a thermoplastic from renewable sources, such as for car interiors and mobile phones.

The most common bioplastics are made from
TPS thermoplastic starch
PLA polylactic acid
PBS polybutylene succinate

The European Bioplastics Association shows examples of various bioplastic products here.

More information on Wikipedia.

Note that some bioplastics are NOT designed to be biodegradable. Their avoidance of extracting non-renewable resources is their major environmental benefit, rather than their potential to reduce the bulk of solid waste.

For instance, the 2007 Mazda Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid vehicle used PLA fabric for its seats and rigid PLA for its lower panel, shift panel, front console, glove box lid, and hydrogen tank cover.

Mitsubishi was also developing "Green Plastics" for some of its car interiors, such as bamboo-reinforced PBS for trim material and PLA with nylon fiber for its floor mats.

There is a continuing debate on the net environmental benefits of bioplastics. While the sources are renewable, the corn or sugarcane crops do need to be intensively farmed. Moreover despite claims of biodegradability, many bioplastics degrade too slowly, some up to 100 or 1000 years!

Samples of various bioplastics can be found in the FBE Materials Library.or trim material

PLA Polylactide

Polylactic acid or polylactide (PLA) is a biodegradable polyester from fermented corn starch, cane sugar, wheat starch. It can be processed like most thermoplastics into fiber and film. PLA is often made into biodegradable plastic cups, but cannot hold hot liquids unless it is modified into PDLA or PLLA, which increases its melting and glass transition temperatures significantly.

In packaging PLA is used as biodegradable loose-fill, compost bags, sandwich packaging, and disposable cutlery. It is also used for biodegradable sutures, nappies, feminine hygiene products and disposable garments. PLA is more expensive than petroleum-based plastics, but its price has been falling as production increases.

NatureWorks is the world's biggest commercial manufacturer of PLA bioplastic. Its range of PLA consumer products can be found here. Technical data sheets, fact sheets and processing guides are available here.

Some of the Australian brands which use PLA for its bottles are

• Natures Organics haircare line
• Cool Change natural spring water

PLA is compostable and biodegradable in industrial composting conditions, but it will not degrade or disintegrate on the supermarket shelves. In order to degrade, PLA must be exposed to temperatures greater than 60°C and relative humidity greater than 90% (these heat and moisture conditions are optimal for naturally occurring microorganisms to act on the PLA) for approximately 60 to 80 days; after which it composts into carbon dioxide, water, inorganic compounds and biomass. Natureworks advises that PLA will NOT decompose in backyard or home composters (due to lack of temperature and inconsistent conditions). PLA will also not degrade in landfills, due to low oxygen and temperature drops. Industrial composters with carefully regulated temperature, moisture and turning are required.

There are some laboratory tests though which show that PLA can decompose into carbon dioxide and water, such as the one by University of Nebraska. Another study by Iowa State University and University of Costa Rica showed results of visible degradation, but did not claim complete decomposition. Suming Li & Michael Vert's chapter on biodegradation of aliphatic polyesters in the book Degradable Polymers: Principles and Applications claimed that "in particular, it is now well known that PLA polymers degrade completely and rather rapidly in a compost where the temperature is usually between 50 and 60C."

There's another discussion on this on the Greener Package knowledge exchange on sustianable packaging.

The Green Dot

The Green Dot (Der Grüne Punkt) is the license symbol of a European network of industry-funded systems for recycling the packaging materials of consumer goods. It was originally introduced in 1991 by Duales System Deutschland (DSD) following the introduction of the 1991 German Ordinance on the Avoidance and Recovery of Packaging Waste (aka Packaging Ordinance, Verpackungsverordnung) which became the basis for the 1994 European Union Packaging Directive.

Under these waste recovery schemes manufacturers are made responsible for the recycling or disposal of any packaging in which their products are sold. Instead of collecting recyclable packaging themselves, they can join the Green Dot scheme and pay the license fees for using the Green Dot logo on their packaging labels.

As the Green Dot license fees are based on the weight and type of packaging materials used as well as the volumes of packaged products manufactured, the scheme encourages manufacturers to cut down on their use of packaging in order to minimize the cost of license fees which are passed on to consumers, making their merchandise costlier.

The Green Dot logo communicates to consumers that the manufacturer contributes to the cost of recovery and recycling of the used packaging. The logo also informs consumers to place the usedpackages in separate yellow bags or yellow wheelie bins for collection by DSD-operated waste collection vehicles and sorted and recycled in DSD facilities. If any packaging is found in the yellow bags without the Green Dot logo, the manufacturers are fined, as they have not effectively complied with the law on recovering their used packaging.

The successful German Green Dot scheme has now been replicated in 23 other European countries, as part of the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/EC. This binds all manufacturers worldwide that sell products in the 27 member states of the European Community to recover their own packaging. The Green Dot is now used by more than 130,000 companies encompassing 460 billion packages.

See here a series of recycling videos produced by the DSD.

Twist Loofah

The paperboard box for Twist Loofah Sponge has preprinte cutting and folding diagrams at the back, to transform the used packaging into bird feeders which can be hung directly outside the kitchen window.

Tresdon Versatile Bottle Package

This Tresdon carry home wine packaging system converts into a wine rack, which can be expanded the more "boxes" you buy. The versatile design by Icon Design Group won a bronze IDEA International Design Excellence Award in 2005.

Y Water Bottles

Yves Béhar designed the bottles for Y Water, which can be repurposed into toy building blocks after use. The bottle won many international design awards in 2008. He talked about his work on this project at TED.com: designing objects that tell stories.

Intolerable Beauty of Packaging Waste

Chris Jordan is best known for his unsettling, large scale portraits on mass consumerism in the USA, which typically show the consequences which will arise from human habits. His works on Intolerable Beauty and Running the Numbers are graphical depictions of statistics from American consumer society.

He pictured shocking stats at TED.com.




National Geographic's Human Footprint channel calculated that in one lifetime, the average UK consumer uses up 49,717 cans of soda.

Heineken WoBo

Alfred Heineken was visiting his beer factories around the world, when he found many beer bottles littering the beaches of the Caribbean island of Curaçao. He discovered that the island's lower-class lacked affordable building materials and had inadequate housing, so he asked Dutch architect N John Habraken to design what he called "a brick that holds beer". Thus was born the stackable Heineken WoBo (World Bottle), which has been used to build bottle walls for houses. This is a fantastic example of upcycling, a design strategy fostered by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle.

Body Shop Packaging

In the past The Body Shop offered customers the option of refilling used Body Shop containers, with a price reduction as an enticement. However less than 1% of customers used this option and this strategy was stopped. They still promote repurposing of their packaging.

Packaging Recycling Videos

Here are some videoclips from "Giving Packaging a New Life", produced in 2001 by Duales System Deutschland, http://www.gruener-punkt.de/, otherwise known as the Green Dot.




More videoclips from the same production:

Recycling paper
Recycling tinplate
Recycling aluminium
Recycling glass
Recycling plastics
Recycling tetrapaks

Container Deposit Legislation

Only the state of South Australia practices Container Deposit Legislation, refunding to the value of 10c per can or bottle. This practice started in 1977 to reduce littering as legislated by the Beverage Container Act of SA.

A nationwide container deposit scheme has been proposed in the Senate of the Federal Parliament. All attempts in other states have been unsuccessful so far (Victoria tried it twice but rescinded). (Note: plain milk and wine in glass containers are outside the scope of the South Australian CDL, and fruit juices and flavoured milks in 1L or bigger containers).

Packaging Covenant

Australia's National Packaging Covenant is a voluntary initiative to reduce the environmental effects of used packaging on the environment. Industry, government and community groups sign and commit to improved environmental packaging outcomes. Signing is voluntary, yet brand owners who do not sign may face state government regulations to ensue that signatories are not disadvantaged. The covenant has over 640 signatories.

The NPC has come up with an Environmental Code of Practice for Packaging, which includes a questionnaire for design. The code is also available on Schedule 5 of the NPC.

Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Th US-based Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a 200-strong association of packaging manufacturers, which collectively envision a true cradle-t0-cradle system for all packaging. The SPC came up with an 8-point criteria in its definition of sustainable packaging:

1. Is beneficial, safe & healthy for individuals and communities throughout its life cycle.
2. Meets market criteria for performance and cost.
3. Is sourced, manufactured, transported, and recycled using renewable energy.
4. Maximizes the use of renewable or recycled source materials.
5. Is manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices.
6. Is made from materials healthy in all probable end of life scenarios.
7. Is physically designed to optimize materials and energy.

8. Is effectively recovered and utilized in biological and/or industrial cradle to cradle cycles.

Sustainable Packaging Alliance

The Australian-based Sustainable Packaging Alliance aims to be an international focal point for knowledge, tools and expertise that catalyse and facilitate continuous improvement in the environmental performance and sustainability of packaging systems. Through these capabilities, SPA aims to contribute to the positioning of Australia as an international leader in commercial application and adoption of sustainable packaging systems.

The SPA provided a definition of sustainable packaging, naming four principles:

1. Effective: provide social and economic benefits.
2. Efficient: provide benefits by using materials, energy and water as efficiently as possible.
3. Cyclic: be recoverable through industrial or natural systems.
4. Clean: non-polluting and non-toxic.

In one of its papers, Towards Sustainable Packaging, the SPA illustrated several strategies for addressing environmental considerations in packaging.

Books on Sustainable Packaging

Boylston, Scott. 2009. Designing sustainable packaging. UNSW 688.8

Jedlicka, Wendy. 2008. Packaging sustainability: tools, systems, strategies for innovative package design. 688.8

Denison, Edward. 2001. Packaging prototypes 3: thinking green. UNSW 658.564/11

Roat, Richard. 1995. Eco design: environmentally sound packaging and graphic design. COFA 741.6/78

Klimchuk, Marianne. 2006. Packaging design: successful product branding from concept to shelf. SLNSW 658.564

Lewis, Helen. 2006. Packaging and product stewardship: a summary of international regulations and policies. UTS 363.7282