The reign of plastic is coming to an end: and these are some of the candidates to replace it
By: Hans Garibaldi
Tags: Ecology, Environment, Global Warming, Plastic

They say that after the death of each king, the ancient Persians ‘celebrated’ five days of anarchy. The idea was that riots and disorder would calm their rebellion and make them more faithful to the successor. I’m not convinced it was a real custom, but I am convinced that it’s a constant concern in almost every area of life. Above all, in those places where the death of a standard is experienced as something deeply traumatic.

Today, if there is an indisputable king of modern society, that is definitely plastic. But he is a king in poor health and against whom many experts, activists, businessmen and politicians have taken up arms. In this century, we have seen plastic grow, triumph and become a huge pollution problem.

And now that we want to get rid of it, we realize that we cannot live without it. For this reason, the war against plastic seemed to put us headlong into those five days of anarchy of the ancient Persians

There are many alternatives that dream of reaching the Plastic Throne.

The race to replace plastic

Everything stems from a very reasonable reflection. If we cannot get rid of all the plastic we use, but it is doing us badly: perhaps we can replace it with materials with similar characteristics, but without those sanitary, ecological or industrial problems.

And we are in it. Against the clock, too. Because companies and research institutes are quite clear that the zero moment for alternatives to plastic is now: society is sensitive to the problem and politics is more than open to seeking solutions. In this context, whoever arrives first can take a good part of the cake. And, beware, there is no shortage of participants in the race, so many that in this installment we only review a few: the most curious or those who seem capable of displaying the most potential.

Bioplastics

The first option that comes to mind is plant-based plastic. These bioplastics are built with different complex biomolecules such as potato starch, corn starch, lignin or cellulose. They are fully biodegradable and, during their useful life, have qualities very similar to ordinary plastic.

There are many centers, companies or associations such as Full Cycle Bioplastics, Biome Bioplastics, Asobiocom, Elk Packaging, Biocane and VTT Technical Research Center in Finland that are working on biopolymers capable of replacing plastic. And although we have not found a universal substitute (yet) we do have biosolutions for any problem.

Lactoplastics

In 1897, while investigating different materials to develop an impermeable material, Spitteler and Krische discovered that casein (a protein in milk) became hard and insoluble when treated with formaldehyde. Thus, casein plastics were born and became very popular: they were quickly used to make small decorative objects (buttons, buckles, umbrella handles, jewelry, etc …) and thus replace ivory and tortoiseshell. But they soon discovered that it broke very easily.

In recent times there are numerous researchers determined to revitalize the idea of converting casein into a biodegradable material capable of competing with the stiffness and compressibility of polystyrene. The applications are many, but there is still a lot of work to get an optimal material. Of course, if they get it, it would be milk.

Other plastics of animal origin

Lactoplastics are not the only material trying to use biomolecules of animal origin to generate substitutes for plastic. A particularly interesting line of work are feathers. Above all, because chicken feathers are a problem in themselves. More than 1.3 billion kilos of chicken feathers are generated in the United States alone, and we don’t know what to do with them. For a time they were used as animal feed, but it was years ago that they stopped being made to prevent health problems.

However, feathers have one very interesting thing: keratin. Keratin is in animal hair, nails, horns, or hooves. The idea seems obvious: if we can find industrial methods to extract and process all that keratin we could generate very interesting materials. There are several research centers trying.

Farm containers

Mushrooms are really useful for many things. They potentially can feed astronauts in outer space, but it could also serve to find a substitute for plastic. Ecovative has spent a decade focused on using mycelium to convert crop residues into materials with similar properties to Styrofoam in just a few days.

Biodegradable plastics

Another very interesting way follows just the opposite way: they don’t try to make biopolymers more resistant, they try to make plastics biodegradable.

An important line of research is being developed to develop “prodegradant additives” that are incorporated into normal plastics and allow them to degrade in record times. There are commercial technologies such as TDPA or MasterBatch Pellets that show that it is a very fertile field.