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Bio-based plastics (bioplastics) are fully or partially made from biological resources, rather than fossil raw materials.  They are based on raw materials such as sugarcane, mainly cultivated in Brazil.  Other agricultural commodities used as raw materials for bioplastics, such as maize & potatoes, are also products of highly industrialized farming [PA, 2019].

  

Large-scale industrial plants convert these agricultural commodities into the chemical building-blocks that are fed into a production process similar to conventional plastic production.  In 2017, the production capacity of bio-based plastic was about 1% of total plastics output.  However, expanding the cultivation of agricultural raw materials is not an option for producing environmentally friendly plastic.

  

Figure 1 shows the global production capability of bioplastics in 2022.