Bio-based plastics (i.e. plastics made from renewable sources) are projected to grow roughly 48% by 2028. This is expected to be driven largely by major consumer goods and food service companies embedding them into their packaging commitments. While the intention is to support a circular economy, the reality becomes more complex.
Many of these materials are marketed as “compostable,” yet they typically require specific industrial conditions to actually break down. Such conditions are not widely available.
While only about 15–30% of the global population has access to composting, just 20–30% of organic waste in those systems is actually captured.
Of the compostable plastics that do enter these streams, less than 5% are successfully composted, and many facilities reject them altogether due to contamination concerns or impacts on compost quality. As a result, most compostable plastics still end up in landfills or incinerators, where they behave similarly to conventional plastics.
If bio-based plastics depend on systems that rarely “compost” them, are we advancing circularity or reinforcing a linear system under a greener label?
Sources
¹ European Bioplastics & Nova-Institute, Bioplastics Market Data (2023–2024)
² World Bank, What a Waste 2.0 (2018) + global composting access estimates
³ U.S. EPA (2023); Zero Waste Europe (2020)
⁴ Eunomia (bioplastics/composting analyses)
⁵ BioCycle industry surveys (various years)
⁶ OECD, Global Plastics Outlook (2022); European Commission (2020)