>Is the price of degradable packaging advantageous?
Is the price of degradable packaging advantageous?
2023-11-07
According to the requirements of the plastic restriction order issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment at the beginning of the year, shopping malls, supermarkets, pharmacies, bookstores and other places as well as catering packaged takeout services and various exhibition activities in built-up areas of municipalities, provincial capitals, and separately planned cities will be prohibited by the end of this year. Use non-degradable bags; at the same time, we must ban the use of disposable non-degradable tableware in the national catering industry by the end of the year.
On March 23, 2020, Hainan Province took the lead in issuing a ban on the production, sale and use of disposable non-degradable plastic products, which will be implemented on December 1 at the end of the year. It clarifies the types and product forms of non-degradable plastics, with particular emphasis on all types of materials containing non-biodegradable polymers. The concept of non-degradable is very clearly divided. At present, Beijing, Shandong, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Yunnan, and Shaanxi have also successively issued specific implementation opinions banning the use of non-degradable plastic bags. According to the person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, the new version of the plastic restriction order will be divided into three time periods: 2020, 2022, and 2025, in accordance with the principle of "banning and restricting one batch, replacing one batch, and regulating one batch" to clearly strengthen the control of plastic pollution. Phased mission objectives.
In the early days when the new version of the plastic restriction order was proposed, the industry generally believed that with the ban on single-use non-degradable plastics, the plastic packaging industry would usher in a larger market space for alternative products, among which degradable plastic packaging and paper packaging materials received greater attention. . So in terms of substitutability, which one is better, degradable plastic packaging or paper packaging materials?
First of all, the cost of degradable plastic and paper packaging is quite different in terms of raw material costs. The raw materials for degradable plastic packaging that can be commercialized include PLA (polylactic acid), PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), PBS (polybutylene succinate) and PBAT (polyhexylene terephthalate). Butylene glycol diacid). Among them, PLA and PHA are 100% biodegradable plastics, while PBS and PBAT use part or all of the biobased monomers to produce biodegradable plastics. Domestic products that have achieved mass production and have the potential to continue to expand production capacity are concentrated in PLA and PBAT. The domestic market price of the two materials is about 20,000 yuan per ton, which is three times the price of traditional plastics.
The raw materials for paper packaging are mainly corrugated boxboards, white cardboard and other packaging base papers. The price range of the main varieties is roughly 4,000-5,000 yuan/ton. However, as far as the application of paper bags and plastic bags is concerned, the weight of paper bags is about 4 times that of plastic bags of the same size, and the cost of actual application will be significantly higher than that of traditional plastics.