I’m typing “are bioplastics sustainable?” into my search engine, Ecosia. The top hits include a slurry of criticisms of bioplastics. As I read through the articles, it’s clear that bioplastic’s feedstocks are a huge problem.

Do the negative effects of deforestation and land use make these products worse for the environment than petroleum-based plastics? Is the bioplastic industry just a new form of greenwashing to make consumers feel better about their single-use plastics?

Plastic pollution is a problem everywhere. From the plastic bags blowing across our neighborhoods to the island-sized plastic gyres floating in the ocean, we encounter the plastic problem at every scale.

Many are asking what can we do about it? Are there any plastic alternatives that are actually sustainable? What about compostable plastics? Are they really compostable, or is it all just hype to get us to make us think our plastic problem has been solved?  

The biopolymer PHA has existed on Earth for millions of years since scientists first discovered polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB, in the PHA family) in 1925. Because fossil fuels were abundant, cheap, and readily available in the 1920s, PHA’s material properties did not become commercially interesting until recently. 

As we become more aware of the scarcity of fossil fuels and environmental drawbacks of fossil fuel reliance, the desire for a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based plastics has grown.