After more than 10 years in the biodegradable plastics business, BASF SE has grown tired of waiting for the market to develop on its own. Through composting pilot programs and awareness building initiatives, the global chemical company is taking a practical approach to going green.
BASF featured its two biodegradable lines, Ecovio and Ecoflex, at the 2011 Chinplas exhibition held in Guangzhou, in a promotion careful to embrace the limitations of biodegradable plastics.
“Our goal must be that we achieve the same performance with biodegradable plastics as with regular plastics,” said Tobias Haber, the head of specialty plastics in BASF’s Asia Pacific division. “We’re not there with every plastic.”
BASF is focusing on the areas where biodegradable adds value without compromising on performance — plastic film and packaging.
“We only want to use renewable products when they improve sustainability,” Haber said. “We want to focus on areas where biodegradability adds value.
“We don’t want to replace each and every plastic in the world.”
The two products that Haber focused on were agricultural film and plastic bags intended to be used for composting and agricultural films that can be plowed back into a field. The bags are being promoted along with a push to increase the number of industrial composting facilities around the world. “We’re especially focused on markets where industrial composting is available,” Haber said. BASF also ran a pilot composting program in Thailand as well as Germany. It’s a program the company plans to take global
“The consumer goes shopping with this bag,” said Haber, holding up a BASF compostable bag and a tiny waste bin during the BASF news conference. “He can do that multiple times because it’s a very strong bag, and then he can collect bio waste in the bag and put it into the bio bin.
“It’s very hygienic, non-smelly and convenient.”
Then, when the bag of organic waste goes to the industrial compost facility, micro-organisms will help break down the bag into a mix of harmless leftovers. Agricultural film, while it has to be tailored to specific uses, is also broken down over time by micro-organisms in the soil. The compost left behind, said Haber, is not garbage. “We don’t see organic waste as waste,” he said. “We see it as a valuable resource—compost is a marketable commodity.”
BASF has been offering at least one of its biodegradable lines since 1998.
“Maybe this was a situation when we were too early,” Haber said. “You also need the right market.”
Today, with increasingly environmentally-conscious customers, BASF feels the time is right. In China, Haber added, these goals align with the government’s recently released 12th Five-Year-Plan, which supports composting. Beijing has already experimented with industrial composting on a small scale during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. These experiments are valuable lessons, said Haber.
“First the consumers have to experience the product and see the value,” he said. “And we, as the leading chemical company in the world, want to prove these products work in a real life situation.”
