The first plenary session was opened by a welcome adress of Dr. Harald Käb, Chairman of European Bioplastics and Christophe Doukhi-de Boissoudy, Chairman of the French Club-Bioplastiques. Käb introduced the challenges for the future bioplastics development: “Sufficient material supply will be a very basic parameter for the future of bioplastics. This can be achieved threefold: utilising existing production capacities to the full, building up new production sites by known and yet unknown market players and broadening the scope of materials and material properties.” Also waste management will play a crucial role as well as material developments. “The bioplastics industry is at cutting edge. Fortunately, politics become more and more aware of the potential of reducing dependency on crude oil not only for fuels but also in material use of renewable ressources.”
photo: niab.com
The representative of the French Ministry of Agriculture, Julien Turienne, took up the thread and explained the French policies for bio-based products, which are motivated by their advantages, i.e. the substitution of fossil or non renewable, the improvement of innovation and competitive-ness and the preservation and creation of jobs in agriculture and agro-industry. Amongst the French actions are the proposal to prefer bioplastic bags regulated by law (which was rejected by the European Commission due to the free trade and packaging directive; France now works on transforming these measures in incentive measures, e.g. ecotax). Other actions include a study on labels that can be used for the promotion of bio-based products and an initiative to enhance an European framework to develop bio-based products with several member states by a memorandum. It says that biofuels and bioenergy are already covered by an legislative framework and an equivalent for material use is needed.
Support also came from the plastic converters, represented at the conference by the association European Plastic Converters (EuPC). EuPC sees bioplastics on a par with conventional plastics. The opening session was topped off by two presentations that can be seen as two ends of the broad bioplastics range: One of the bioplastics pioneers with a proven track record in compostable plastics, Italian Novamont, explained their approach of building up a sustainable bioplastics business, while Brazil Braskem presented their plans to build up production capacities of 200,000 tonnes/y (2009) for polyethylene from sugar cane, so-called “green PE”.
Source: european-bioplastics.org
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