Advancing biodegradable alternatives to plastic

One of the challenges of conventional plastic waste is that decomposition can take tens to hundreds of years. The United Nations Environment Program estimates that approximately 2,000 garbage trucks worth of plastic are deposited into the world’s water systems every day. 

As part of the search for more sustainable packaging materials, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) professor Ehsan Behzadfar, a member of the Graphic Communications Management department at The Creative School, is working with his team to develop an alternative to regular plastic polymers that is made from natural materials that are biodegradable. 

“The first thing that we should always do is ensure that polymers shouldn’t end up in nature, but what we do, just in case they do end up in nature, is ensure they are not harmful to nature. They break down easily so that they can go back to nature,” he said.

Transforming starch into a synthetic plastic alternative

Professor Behzadfar leads the Sustainable Polymers Research Lab, where he and his team have developed prototypes of a starch thermoplastic. Starch is a plant-based carbohydrate, and chemically modifying it can create a “biopolymer” material that is heat resistant, biodegradable and can be shaped for use in the packaging industry.  

“It’s a starch, which can be useful in a number of applications, but one of the major ones is that it can be used as a kind of flexible film to replace some conventional plastics like flexible wraps or wrappers,” said professor Behzadfar. 

He explains that starch is useful because it is flexible. Not all biopolymers or polymers created from natural materials offer that property, making starch a good choice for developing flexible plastic alternatives. However, there are some challenges in creating a successful starch polymer, such as low thermal instability. Professor Behzadfar and his team, including postdoctoral fellow Arnab Dutta and graduate student Hayden McGreal, successfully experimented with modifying the starch to enhance its thermal stability and create a prototype, as well as developing a scalable and reusable process. 

The team will continue to improve the material and process so that the starch thermoplastic can be scaled up and prepared for widespread adoption. 

It’s a starch, which can be used as a kind of flexible film to replace some conventional plastics like flexible wraps or wrappers.

This research is supported by Mitacs and the startup company SimPol Technologies.