Bioplastic from Renewable Biomass: A Facile Solution for a Greener Environment

Environmental pollutions are increasing day by day due to more plastic application. The plastic material is going in our food chain as well as the environment employing microplastic and other plastic-based contaminants. From this point, bio-based plastic research is taking attention for a sustainable and greener environment with a lower footprint on the environment. This evaluation should be made considering the whole life cycle assessment of the proposed technologies to make a whole range of biomaterials. Bio-based and biodegradable bioplastics can have similar features as conventional plastics while providing extra returns because of their low carbon footprint as long as additional features in waste management, like composting. Interest in competitive biodegradable materials is growing to limit environmental pollution and waste management problems. Bioplastics are defined as plastics deriving from biological sources and formed from renewable feedstocks or by a variation of microbes, owing to the ability to reduce the environmental effect. The research and development in this field of bio-renewable resources can seriously lead to the adoption of a low-carbon economy in medical, packaging, structural and automotive engineering, just to mention a few. This review aims to give a clear insight into the research, application opportunities, sourcing and sustainability, and environmental footprint of bioplastics production and various applications. Bioplastics are manufactured from polysaccharides, mainly starch-based, proteins, and other alternative carbon sources, such as algae or even wastewater treatment byproducts. The most known bioplastic today is thermoplastic starch, mainly as a result of enzymatic bioreactions. In this work, the main applications of bioplastics are accounted. One of them being food applications, where bioplastics seem to meet the food industry concerns about many the packaging-related issues and appear to play an important part for the whole food industry sustainability, helping to maintain high-quality standards throughout the whole production and transport steps, translating into cleaner and smarter delivery chains and waste management. High perspectives resides in agricultural and medical applications, while the number of fields of applications grows constantly, for example, structural engineering and electrical applications. As an example, bio-composites, even from vegetable oil sources, have been developed as fibers with biodegradable features and are constantly under research.