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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
I run a bioplastics company. I have spent years telling people our materials can help solve plastic pollution. And I need to tell you that most of what my industry says is, at best, misleading.<\/p>\n
I call it misleading not because the science is wrong, but because the promises we make are detached from the infrastructure, the chemistry and the economics that determine whether those promises are kept.<\/p>\n
This is not easy to write, but entrepreneurs owe their audiences the truth, especially when the truth implicates their own business.<\/p>\n
So here are the common and lesser-known claims companies in my industry make that paint a blurry picture of half-truths.<\/p>\n
When you see \u201ccompostable\u201d on a coffee cup or a food container, you probably picture it breaking down in soil somewhere. Maybe in your backyard compost bin. Maybe in a municipal facility down the road.<\/p>\n
To understand what actually happens to that \u201ccompostable\u201d cup, you have to understand PLA. Polylactic acid is the dominant compostable bioplastic on the market today, and it needs sustained temperatures of 55 to 58\u00b0C to break down. Your backyard compost pile never reaches that.<\/p>\n
So PLA needs an industrial composting facility with controlled heat, humidity and microbial activity to actually decompose.<\/p>\n
A 2024 Beyond Plastics report found that of 173 U.S. industrial composters surveyed, only 46 reported accepting compostable packaging<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ten states in the US have zero composting facilities. Twenty states have between one and three.<\/p>\n So what happens to the \u201ccompostable\u201d cup you tossed in the bin? It goes to a landfill. And NatureWorks\u2019 own published study<\/a> estimates that under typical landfill conditions, PLA takes over 100 years to degrade.<\/p>\n One hundred years. For a cup labeled \u201ccompostable.\u201d The industry knows this. It keeps printing the labels anyway.<\/p>\n Here is something most people outside the bioplastics industry do not realize.<\/p>\n The word \u201cbioplastic\u201d does not mean what you think it means. It covers three entirely different things:<\/p>\n These three properties do not overlap the way marketing suggests. A plastic can be plant-based and persist in the ocean for centuries. A plastic can be fossil-derived and still biodegrade in certain conditions.<\/p>\n The reverse is also true.<\/p>\n Bio-PE and bio-PET are made from sugarcane instead of petroleum. But they are chemically identical to conventional polyethylene and PET. They do not biodegrade. They persist for centuries. They fragment into the same microplastics. The only thing \u201cbio\u201d about them is where the carbon came from.<\/p>\n The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry<\/a> (IUPAC), the global authority on chemical terminology, has explicitly discouraged the use of the word \u201cbioplastic\u201d since 2012. Their recommendation: use \u201cbiobased polymer\u201d instead.<\/p>\n Early messaging in the industry used \u201cbioplastics,\u201d and I cannot accuse anyone of deliberate intent to mislead. But after IUPAC issued its clarification, nothing changed. Probably because a precise, scientific-sounding term does not serve marketers as well as a vague, green-sounding one.<\/p>\n And the biggest players, either knowingly or unknowingly, exploit this confusion at scale. <\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a deep assumption, shared by consumers and many entrepreneurs, that if a material comes from a plant, it must be safe. Corn is food. Sugarcane is food. So plastic made from them must be harmless.<\/p>\n The science says otherwise.<\/p>\n Zimmermann et al.<\/a>, in a 2020 study published in Environment International, tested 43 bio-based and biodegradable food-contact products against 30 conventional plastic samples.<\/p>\n Two out of three bioplastic products triggered toxic responses in at least one lab assay. The toxicity profiles were statistically indistinguishable from those of petroleum plastics. Some PLA and starch-based products contained more than 20,000 distinct chemical features.<\/p>\n The problem is not the plant, but the additives added to the plant-based polymers<\/a> to create usable plastic products.<\/p>\n These additives \u2014 the plasticizers, colorants, stabilizers and processing chemicals \u2014 give bioplastics their functional properties, and are quite often the same chemicals used in conventional plastics. Nobody regulated them differently just because the base resin came from a crop, for instance, corn.<\/p>\n The PlastChem Report<\/a> published in 2024 catalogued 16,325 chemicals used across all plastics. Of those, 4,219 are flagged as hazardous. And 66% lack publicly available safety data. These chemicals appear in both fossil and bio-based products.<\/p>\n So the hard part of bioplastics is not making plastic from plants. It is making sure you have not added the same chemicals that made fossil plastic dangerous in the first place.<\/p>\n Ask any bioplastics company for full chemical disclosure. If they hesitate, that tells you everything.<\/p>\n The bioplastics industry talks in growth rates. And the growth rates do sound impressive. But absolute numbers tell a different story.<\/p>\n European Bioplastics\u2019 2025 market data<\/a> puts global bioplastics production at 1.67 million tonnes against roughly 431 million tonnes of total plastic production. That is 0.5%. And the European Environment Agency notes<\/a> that this share has remained \u201cquite stable\u201d because fossil plastic production keeps growing alongside bioplastics.<\/p>\n Coca-Cola recently pushed back its goal for reusable packaging. PepsiCo and Nestl\u00e9 face ongoing challenges in reducing waste and scaling up reusable packaging. Unilever\u2019s goal to halve its use of virgin plastic by 2025 was at risk due to setbacks.<\/p>\n So when a corporation announces it will \u201cincrease bioplastic use,\u201d it has to be asked, \u201cBy how much?\u201d In tonnes. Not percentages. Because a 200% increase in a rounding error is still a rounding error.<\/p>\n This sounds reassuring. But look closer, and you will see it is a statement about the gaps in regulation, not the strength of the product.<\/p>\n The pattern across everything I have described is the same: Voluntary standards are not working.<\/p>\n I believe the bioplastics industry needs mandatory regulation. Not because I want more rules. But because voluntary self-policing has let too many actors hide behind good branding while the infrastructure, the chemistry and the accountability remain absent.<\/p>\n After everything I have just written, this is a fair question. If bioplastics are compromised, why do I keep striving to build a bioplastics company?<\/p>\n Because I think there is still real value to be created.<\/p>\n Over the last 5 years, I\u2019ve realized that entrepreneurs in the bioplastics space in India and many other countries of the Asia-Pacific can embrace at least guiding principles and live with a guilt-free conscience.<\/p>\nClaim 2: \u201cOur product is a bioplastic.\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Claim 3: \u201cOur material is plant-based, so it is safe.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Claim 4: \u201cThe biggest plastic users are massively increasing their bioplastic use.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Claim 5: \u201cOur product meets all applicable standards.\u201d<\/h2>\n
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So why am I still in this industry?<\/h2>\n