Over the past few years our customers have been communicating to us their desire for greener solutions for petroleum based plastics. One clear solution for this is bioplastic, which is make from plant material instead of oil. Braskem provides a quality bioplastic called “I’m green TM Polyethylene” . It can be used as a replacement to conventional Polyethylene made from oil. In this article we will explain the benefits of bioplastic and how you can get started using it in a production environment.
Bioplastic
I’m green TM Polyethylene is made from sugarcane which is a renewable raw material. It can be planted and harvested every year making it a good source for plastic production instead of relying on finite sources of oil. Sugarcane is able to absorb CO2 while it is being grown, so in this way production of bioplastic can be used to capture CO2 in the atmosphere. The process for converting sugarcane into a plastic is demonstrated in this image:
(Braskem 2019)
Circular Economy
The process of bioplastic production fits into the idea of circular economy. The concept is that a material can be used more than once and over, over again. When a raw material is manufactured it goes into a product. The product can be recycled and made back into a raw material again. This forms a circular path for the raw material meaning little to no new raw material is needed. The concept visualized looks like this:
(Green Dot Plastics 2019)
I’m Green TM as a raw material can be inserted into the circular economy and after its first use can be recycled and made into raw material again. This makes the whole process very sustainable because I’m GreenTM plastic has been sourced from plant material.
Bioplastic in Production
We are excited for our customers to start using I’m GreenTM , but in a production environment it can be costly to try out new materials and this can be a barrier that stops many from trying it out. However we have developed our own solution to make adoption of bioplastics an easier process.
We have lab extruder machines that we have developed specifically for testing out small batches before full production. We currently offer two models; EM LabEx-1 and EM LabEx-3. A mono layer and a 3 layer co-extruder version.
EM LabEx-1 EM LabEx-3
If you are attending the K-Fair you can see the EM LabEx-3 running there! We will be in click here for more information.
Visit us at K-Fair!
Please contact us if you want to get started with using I’m GreenTM bioplastic with one of our lab extruder.