Partial biodegradability causes more harm, says Balakrishnan of Natur-Tec

At the beginning of his presentation, Balakrishnan mentions flexible packaging as “a multilayered challenge”. His focus was on the value proposition and market drivers for bioplastics. According to him, Closing the loop in the flexible packaging is a major challenge.

“Carbon being the backbone of plastics packaging, remains in the environment for an extended period of time. We are trying to change the backbone of the polymer from a carbon to a polyester backbone,” says Balakrishnan.

He highlights the stages of building circularity, the first one being how to eliminate unnecessary packaging. He adds, “If you can't eliminate it, can you reduce it? If you can't reduce it, can you recycle or reuse it, or make it compostable? And then how do you ensure that what you say is recycling is actually getting recycled?” Then the fifth stage, according to Balakrishnan is how do you decouple the source of the carbon from the end of life.

He explains, “The source of the carbon refers more to the biosolids as the source of the renewable material. The end of life research deals with what happens when you dispose of the product. So there has to be some decoupling of carbon here.” He says this encompasses the circular vision for plastics.

While talking about bioplastics, he tells the audience that bioplastics are two categories of materials - One is what we call bio based, which refers to the origin of the carbon in the material. “It all depends on if the carbon is petroleum-based or fossil-based feedstock versus a renewable feedstock. That's the first value proposition,” he says.

The second, he says, is biodegradability or compostability, which refers to what happens when you dispose of it in a certain environment. “Biodegradability should not be misunderstood for littering. It has to be related to an end of life environment. And just because a material biodegrades in a certain environment, doesn't mean it will biodegrade in every other environment,” Balakrishnan emphasises.

The one myth he clears out is that not all bio based plastics are necessarily biodegradable or compostable, and all biodegradable and compostable plastics need not necessarily come from bio based feedstock. “Petroleum carbon is formed over millions of years by fossilisation of renewable feedstocks, and this carbon is essentially used to make plastics,” he explains.

Balakrishnan adds, “If we use renewable feedstocks, then we don't basically put in more carbon dioxide than what we use. This is the simple value proposition for bio-based materials and we can use it for any bio-based material.” He brings to the audience’s notice that specifying the environment is important. He says partial biodegradability causes more harm than if it were not to biodegrade. Therefore, he highlights three important factors to look for: environment, timeframe and if it can complete the process of biodegradation in that environment.

Balakrishnan makes a statement that there is not much difference between biodegradability and compostability. He emphasises on the PWM Rules which specifies that they are one and the same, but encourages us to eventually look into it. “There is scientific evidence that says that when food packaging is made compostable, it increases the organic diversion rate from landfills into more managed infrastructure such as composting,” he says.

He feels paper and compostable plastics have a very natural alignment. “In fact, it's a fit, where the advantages of paper, and freely or compostable plastic are used,” he adds. He gives an example of paper being opaque and naturally absorbent, recyclable, transparent, good oil grease barrier, good bond strength, and good seal strength. And along with this, he says, paper is coated with either an acrylic-based emulsion coatings or they are coated with conventional polymers which actually destroys the biodegradability of a great product.

Later, Balakrishnan speaks about Natur-Tec-Tec’s films for flexible packaging. BF700Z family of films, which includes BF7002 films for lamination, and BF7003 clear converter grade films.

He claims that Natur-Tec-Tec can tailor the biobased content and clarity of films. “We are on the roadmap of increasing the bio-based content from 20-25% to 74% bio-based content by 2025,” he concludes.