Environmental Impact of Biobased Materials

Abstract

The materials used to contribute to the development and progress of human life have been used directly, and naturally without any processing in the early ages, but with the increase in human needs in parallel with technological developments, they have started to be processed in accordance with the purpose. Based on this, climate change and environmental pollution, which are the biggest problems of our age, and concerns about the safety of industrial raw materials have enabled the biodegradable and sustainable materials. The advancement of biodegradable biobased plastics with excellent properties is of great interest in last years. In this chapter, the main properties and advantages of the most widely investigated biodegradable biobased plastics (BBPs) in food packaging applications and their environmental impacts are overviewed. Special attention is given to raw materials, energy requirements, and scalability used to produce BBPs for food packaging applications. Different bionanocomposites prepared with incorporation of nanofillers are also explored. This part is constructed on current studies of overview of BBPs about their use as food packaging material. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023.