Biobased food packaging materials: Sustainable alternative to conventional petrochemical packaging materials: A review

Plastics as a packaging material in the food industry is highly preferable, but due to environmental concerns and government legislation, there is a need to develop biobased biodegradable packaging materials. This review includes the sources of biopolymers, methods of productions, future and applications of biobased packaging materials in food packaging. As bioplastic materials have some limitations in terms of mechanical and barrier properties in comparison with synthetic plastics. These limitations can be overcome by using suitable fillers, nanocomposites and certain additives in bioplastics production. The development of bioplastic has a high potential to replace non-biodegradable plastic packaging. Biopolymer with synthetic polymers blends is also an emerging area of research. Bench casting and continuous casting are the popular methods for bioplastic production in the scientific community. According to the global production capacities of the bioplastics report, the present bioplastics production is only 2% of the production volume of the synthetic polymers, it will increase 4% until 2023.