Unlocking agricultural biomass for Europe’s bio-based packaging transition

The use of agricultural biomass for bioplastics and chemicals is central to the transition toward a more sustainable, circular, and climate-smart packaging economy, according to European Bioplastics.

Biomass replaces fossil feedstocks, reduces GHG emissions, and drives economic opportunities within the agricultural sector. 

We speak to European Bioplastics to learn how Europe can unlock the full potential of bio-based materials, while strengthening food security and environmental sustainability. 

What bio-based feedstocks can bioplastics be made of?
European Bioplastics: Bioplastics are commonly made from sugar and carbohydrate-rich plants such as corn, wheat, and sugar beet. These agricultural crops are favored for their enabling cost, widespread availability, rapid renewability, accessible sugars, stable composition, and high land-use efficiency. In addition to primary crops, the bioplastics industry is increasingly expanding its feedstock base by exploring new and innovative sources. 

Europe needs to establish a level playing field for the use of biomass in materials, urges European Bioplastics.

These include lignocellulosic biomass such as agricultural residues (for example, corn cobs, straw, bagasse), forestry byproducts (for example, wood pulp, bark, branches, lignin), aquaculture-derived biomass like algae, and other biowaste streams including municipal and industrial waste. This diversification supports the development of sustainable bio-based materials and helps reduce dependence on fossil resources.

How can using agricultural biomass for bioplastics establish food security?
European Bioplastics: The use of agricultural biomass for bioplastics can contribute positively to food security by promoting regenerative farming practices and improving soil health and productivity. These practices support natural ecosystems and create economic incentives for farmers.

In addition, according to the Renewable Carbon Initiative, the increased use of food and feed crops for chemicals and materials may have multiple positive impacts. These include: 

• Achieving climate change mitigation by shifting away from fossil feedstocks
• Improving land productivity by using high yield food and feed crops and making use of their co-products
• Ensuring economic security for farmers via the option of selling stock to different markets (food, feed, biofuels, material industry)
• Securing market stability by increasing the global availability of food and feed crops, while reducing the risk of shortages and speculation peaks
• Ensuring feed security with high-value protein-rich co-products of food and feed crops 
• Establishing food security by increasing the overall availability of edible crops which can be used as emergency reserves and flexibly distributed in times of crisis.

What factors need to be considered when sourcing biomass?
European Bioplastics: When sourcing biomass, it is critical to ensure sustainable and efficient production aligned with environmental goals. Ensuring access to sustainably grown biomass is essential for the bioplastics industry’s continued growth and its role in the bioeconomy. The combination of regenerative farming methods and new carbon credit mechanisms supports both ecological health and industrial feedstock supply, reinforcing the compatibility between biomass use and broader climate and food system goals.

Is there competition between the use of biomass for food, feed, and materials?
European Bioplastics: There is no competition between the use of biomass for food, feed, and materials. The misconception that the use of biomass for materials may be detrimental to food security is flawed. European Bioplastics stresses there is no competition between the use of biomass for food and materials.

According to the nova-institute, the worldwide biomass demand in 2023 was 13.6 billion tonnes. Of this, only 0.023% was used for biobased polymers. This translates into a land area share of only 0.013% of global agricultural area. The large majority of the global agricultural area is used to grow food and feed or as pastures. The sheer difference shows that there is no competition between the use of biomass for food, feed, and material use.

What is the EU’s regulatory framework for biomaterial production?
European Bioplastics: The current EU regulatory framework favors the use of biomass for energy applications, providing that sector with mandates, quotas, and tax incentives. In contrast, no equivalent measures exist for bio-based materials such as bioplastics, resulting in an uneven playing field. This discrepancy limits the growth potential of the bioplastics industry and hampers the full implementation of the cascading principle, which prioritizes material use of biomass over energy use to maximize resource efficiency. 

Equally strong incentives for all biomass applications would enable the actual implementation of the cascading principle. The principle aims to achieve the resource efficiency of biomass use by prioritizing, wherever possible, the material use of biomass over its energy use, thus increasing the amount of biomass available within the system. Such an alignment is intended to ensure fair access to the biomass raw material market for the development of innovative, high value added bio-based solutions and a sustainable circular bioeconomy.

What regulatory measures need to be taken to unlock the scale of bio-based plastic?
European Bioplastics: Europe needs a level playing field for all bio-based products to ensure the highest economic value creation for the whole value chain and to provide the strongest environmental benefits. A level playing field for the use of biomass in materials, compared to the use of biomass for energy, needs to be established. 

Additionally, the following measures should be adopted to scale up the industry:

1. Setting a legal and regulatory framework to boost investments and drive innovation in the EU: To address the current lack of integration of bioeconomy concepts and priorities within the existing EU regulatory framework. 
2. Incentivizing access to sustainable biomass: To provide coherent and long-term incentives to stimulate a bioeconomy based on an efficient use of biomass. The review of the Bioeconomy Strategy, planned for 2025, provides a unique opportunity to rectify this, by allowing the transition from fossils to renewable materials
3. Providing a level playing field by creating financial support to technological innovation: To increase funding and financing streams for research and innovation projects as well as close-to-market and production projects
4. Closing infrastructure gaps and incentivizing access to food waste collection: To address persisting challenges in implementing EU-wide practices of separating and processing compostable plastics from the general waste stream 
5. Increasing market uptake: To set up a level playing field for bio-based, biodegradable, and compostable plastics, beyond standards and labels. Market incentives, such as the ones recently introduced in the US, are sorely needed in Europe to keep the return on public and private investment from being harvested elsewhere.