Growing Consumer Demand Driving Biobased Materials “Revolution”
The growing consumer demand for new biobased materials, buoyed by the global transition to more sustainable manufacturing processes and products, is creating a burgeoning market. Materials and products derived from biomass sources such as bulk chemicals, platform chemicals, solvents, polymers, and biocomposites are becoming increasingly popular.
Waste-generated materials to replace single-use plastics
The development of new biobased materials is emerging as a vital solution for the compound problems of pollution and fossil-fuel reliance and attendant emissions. Using waste-generated materials to replace single-use plastics, unsustainable textiles, and chemical fertilisers is generating a huge market.
The field can be classified broadly into biochemical, thermochemical, and biotechnological processes. Generally speaking, these processes involve plant breeding, fermentation, and enzyme isolation to derive products able to compete with and replace mainstay synthetic materials such plastic and nylon.
Innovations in the field are being driven by equipment suppliers such as BMG Labtech based in Offenburg, Germany, whose luminescence plate reader is just one of the many important tools contributing to progress in the industry.
Luminescence plate readers have many applications in fields such as academic life science research, drug discovery and screening, clinical laboratories, synthetic biology, and food or water quality monitoring. They are used to detect light photons emitted by chemical, bio-chemical or enzymatic reactions, and prepare them for practical application.
Increasing government regulatory calls for a transition to biobased materials are also helping to speed product development and innovation. There is still some way to go before biobased materials bring a necessarily mass-scale degree of high performance, recyclability, and biodegradability, but significant progress is being made.
While materials such as plastic transformed the age ushered in by the Industrial Revolution, many of these are contributing to the world’s present-tense environmental crisis. Biobased materials are emerging continually and the business opportunities for deploying them in novel products are boundless.
Bioplastic market accounts for only 1% of plastic produced
Despite this, the bioplastic market accounts for only 1% of the 368 million tonnes of plastic produced annually in the world, according to the European Bioplastics Association. The European market alone is estimated to be worth €360,000 million.
New processes to convert biomass components into value-added products and fuels are being led by companies including Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, BSN Medical Smith & Nephew, Molnlycke, Medline, and Dupont.
On-going research at Aalto University in Finland is revealing that processing cellulose, lignin, and other plant-based matter and creating new bio-materials by manufacturers such as the above are creating sustainable mass-use consumer alternatives.
Two new materials in particular are demonstrating the potential to replace single-use plastic in packaging: FoamWood and DipWrap. The former is a light, durable, flexible product based on wood, and the latter an experimental bio-based liquid invented by students. It dries rapidly into a transparent film which can be used to seal vegetables for example, and washed off safely.
Promising treatments for arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis
For its part, Israeili-based company Galmed Pharmaceuticals is leading the application of Amilo-5MER—a five amino acid synthetic peptide MTADV (Methionine, Threonine, Alanine, Aspartic acid, Valine)—that has been discovered to reduce chronic inflammation significantly. The applications for treating rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis are promising.
Amilo 5-MER was discovered by scientists at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, where they found that MTADV as an anti-inflammatory has the potential to reduce pathological and clinical symptoms in studies on mice. Galmed Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical focused on problems of the liver and metabolic and inflammatory diseases.
Meanwhile, Barcelona-based tech startup Dan*na has announced plans to expand its facilities at the Barcelona Science Park, where the company plans to launch a pilot plant to bring its products to industrial scale. Dan*na is developing advanced biomaterials and bioplastics for the biomedical and technological sector.
Dan*na is the only company so far to have achieved “Social and Environmental Impact Company” accreditation from the Ship2B Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to boost the impact economy by helping startups, businesses, and investors maximise profitability in addition to improving their social and environmental impact.
Dan*na’s main products are biomaterials for healthcare issues such as regeneration of tissues, bones, cartilage, and nerves. The company is focussed on bioengineering, bioprinting, and developing technological bioplastics for agriculture and microelectronics.
