Many current legislative, socioeconomic, and social trends in Europe promote increasing use of renewable resources, waste recycling, and waste composting. Biobased packaging materials produced from renewable materials provide a promising alternative to traditionally pro-duced plastics, which mainly are produced from petroleum sources. The biobased packaging materials are produced either from naturally occurring polymers, such as starches or proteins, or the material may be based on fermented organic material. The market of biobased packaging materials is emerging fast and is estimated to grow rapidly within the next ten years. Product development and commercia-lisation have been devoted mainly to short duration applications like disposables, waste bags, agricultural films, diapers, etc.
Packaging materials protect the foods and improve product quality during transportation and storage.
Many of the materials based on renewable sources exhibit good barrier properties towards oxygen and carbon dioxide, especially at low rela-tive humidity levels. However, moisture barrier properties of several of the biobased materials products must be increased in order to com-pete with synthetic packaging materials.