This document discusses the role of biobased materials in waste management. It begins by acknowledging the idealized vision of perfectly closed material cycles where biobased materials would easily decompose. However, it notes that in reality, formal waste management is necessary and biobased materials will enter existing waste schemes. The key advantages of biobased materials - decomposability and renewable resources - are only realized if the materials are managed via high recovery rates of either material or energy through recycling, energy recovery like incineration, or digestion for biogas. The environmental benefits of biobased materials depend on the waste management options utilized.

1. I N D U S T R I A L E C O L O G Y I N E U R O P E
10 Journal of Industrial Ecology http://mitpress.mit.edu/jie
If biobased material is not,
from a waste management
perspective, environmen-
tally favorable per se, it is
necessary to understand
the conditions under which
it does provide environ-
mental advantages.
᭧ 2004 by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Yale University
Volume 7, Number 3–4
Modern Times and
Imperfect Cycles
Managing the Waste from
Biobased Products
Ju¨rgen Geigrich
Somewhere in our imaginations there exists a
rural place where production is local, food is
wholesome and nutritious, energy is renewable,
and all things that are not needed any longer are
handed back to nature for treatment and recy-
cling. This romantic image in which all the ma-
terial cycles are ideal is familiar to most industrial
ecologists. But does the local farmer want to be
without a tractor? Are we all
willing to renounce our satellite
TV sets and fast cars? In cities
people cannot consume only
locally produced goods and un-
packaged foods, and they can-
not simply return wastes to the
local environment.
At the beginning of the
twenty-first century, most of us
live in places that are very far
indeed from this romantic
place, with its ideally closed material cycles. But
are not our thoughts connected to this picture
when we think of biobased materials? Such ma-
terials should be handled easily at the end of
their useful life. Biobased materials are imagined
to decompose easily and vanish without prob-
lems. So the question is, What is the role of bio-
based materials after the end of their lives? Do
they provide a step back—or forward—toward
the ideal material cycles? European research and
debate have provided some insight into the re-
lationship between biobased materials and waste
management.
Well, obviously a TV set or a car will not be,
at least in a time span we can imagine, con-
structed of biobased material. Formal waste man-
agement will therefore remain a crucial element
of modern life and its connected material flows.
When biobased materials become wastes, they
will enter these existing, and hopefully evolving,
waste management schemes. The dream of
throwing a used TV set into the
compost heap in your yard and
producing fertilizer for next
year’s lawn will remain a dream.
The advantages of using
biobased material are inti-
mately connected with waste
management. Advantages such
as saving nonrenewable re-
sources, using a CO2 neutral
material, and having a decom-
posable material increase or de-
crease with the choice of waste management op-
tion. Studies of “old-fashioned biobased”
materials such as paper and paperboard (Vogt et
al. 2001), but also of modern materials such as
starch-based plastics and PLA1
(Vink et al.
2003), show the potential for future sustainable
material management but also the dependence
of overall life-cycle environmental impact on
end-of-life management choices (Patel et al.
2003). In Germany, for instance, where a revi-
sion of the packaging ordinance is underway, the
Federal Ministry of Environment proposes to
treat liquid packaging board (containers for milk
and juice) as “ecologically favorable” and there-
fore comparable to refillable container systems.
This status would give this type of packaging a
big advantage in the market because it would not

2. I N D U S T R I A L E C O L O G Y I N E U R O P E
Geigrich, Modern Times and Imperfect Cycles 11
be burdened with a compulsory deposit, as are all
other one-way beverage containers. Liquid pack-
aging board is considered ecologically favorable
because it is biobased but also because its waste
stream is managed appropriately through recy-
cling (Plinke et al. 2000).
If biobased material is not, from a waste man-
agement perspective, environmentally favorable
per se, it is necessary to understand the condi-
tions under which it does provide environmental
advantages. Consider the benefits biobased ma-
terials can provide. The decomposable attribute
is normally mentioned first. This benefit is only
fully realized if the primary goal is virtual elimi-
nation of the solid material. I remember once
standing in a banana plantation in Central
America. The ground I was standing on consisted
mainly of plastic, because polypropylene ropes
are used to support the banana plants and they
are cut off at the end of each year’s growth. Un-
fortunately, it is too costly to collect the plastic
twine or use biobased and decomposable plant
supporters. The biodegradable nature of some
biobased materials is a clear advantage in this
sort of use, where the decomposition of material
without a trace is desirable.
The value of biological decomposition of ma-
terial in a controlled facility such as a composting
or digestion plant generally depends on whether
a pure “getting rid of” is desired or if other bene-
fits can be gained, such as nutrient recovery, use
of organic matter, or energy extraction. Nutrients
in conventional organic compost substitute for
mineral fertilizers, but modern biobased materials
do not contain these beneficial trace elements.
Organic matter, if left over by the decomposition
process, has a significant beneficial function only
in arid regions or in organically poor soils. Other
possible benefits of composted material, such as
disease suppression, are difficult to quantify. So
the positive aspects of biobased products treated
in a composting plant are limited. The process is
often called “cold incineration” because, like in-
cineration, at its core is a reduction in the vol-
ume of solid material through the oxidation of
organic compounds, but it does not allow for re-
covery of any of the energy content of the de-
composed materials. Considerable energy is ex-
pended in processing biobased materials to make
usable products, and the life-cycle performance
of these goods suffers if none of that energy can
be recovered at the end of the product’s useful
life (Ga¨rtner et al. 2002).
Gaining energy is the main advantage of an-
aerobic digestion plants that produce methane as
biogas that can substitute for fossil fuels. Reduc-
ing the use of limited fossil fuel resources and the
release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere is
therefore the real strength of treating biobased
materials in such facilities. The higher the effi-
ciency of biogas production and the higher the
efficiency of biogas use, the better the environ-
mental performance of the waste management
option and thus the total life cycle. The same is
naturally true for the direct incineration of biob-
ased material (but attention must be paid that no
hazardous emissions occur).
Here the waste scenarios for biobased mate-
rials come in line with the waste management of
all materials. High recovery rates, whether for
the material itself or the use of its energy, are the
crucial parameters for environmentally sound
waste handling. In Europe, all products must be
handled according to the waste management hi-
erarchy laid down in the Waste Management Di-
rective (75/442/EWG). This “waste philosophy,”
which prescribes the sequence of (1) source re-
duction, (2) material recycling, (3) energy re-
covery, and (4) final disposal, applies to biobased
materials as well. Liquid packaging board has re-
ceived the label of “ecologically friendly bever-
age container” in the draft of the German pack-
aging ordinance because separate collection has
resulted in a high recycling rate (over 60%,
mainly into roll cores), the rate of incineration
with a high recovery efficiency has increased, and
methane emissions from landfills have been re-
duced relative to the situation ten years ago.
For the time being, the main driver of waste
management practice in Europe is the Landfill
Directive. It obliges the European Union mem-
ber states to reduce the amount of biodegradable
material placed in landfills. Biodegradable ma-
terial disposed in landfills should be reduced by
25% in the year 2004, 50% in 2007, and 65% in
2014 relative to a 1995 baseline. How these ob-
jectives are to be met is not regulated. All mea-
sures, including source reduction, recycling, in-
cineration, and biodegradation in biological
treatment plants before landfilling, are accept-

3. I N D U S T R I A L E C O L O G Y I N E U R O P E
12 Journal of Industrial Ecology
able ways to meet the objective. Waste biobased
material must be managed within these larger
waste management constraints.
Source reduction remains the most preferred
waste management option. Not using a material
is always the best method of source reduction.
But mass reduction for a given product or its re-
lated function is also a useful approach. This may
be a disadvantage for some biobased materials.
For example, loose-fill packaging chips (used in
packaging fragile items for shipping) made of
starch are 3 times heavier than the equivalent
petroleum-based product made of polystyrene
(Wu¨rdinger et al. 2003).
So the advantages of biobased materials are
realized only by obeying the established rules of
good waste management. But these rules are not
that far from the ideal material cycles of our
imagination. In our romantic vision of the world,
you would cook only as much you wanted to eat
(source reduction), feed the leftovers to your pigs
and use the manure for your vegetables (material
recycling), and burn old wooden material in win-
ter for heating (energy recovery). The only dif-
ference is that in this vision there is no final dis-
posal. This is the difference between reality and
a perfect cycle.
Note
1. Editor’s note: For discussions of making PLA from
municipal food waste or from corn, see the arti-
cles by Sakai and colleagues (2003) and by
Gruber (2003), respectively, in this issue of the
Journal of Industrial Ecology. Note that Sakai and
colleagues abbreviate polylactide polymer as
“PLLA.”
References
Ga¨rtner, S. O., K. Mu¨ller-Sa¨mann, G. A. Reinhardt,
and R. Vetter. 2002. Corn to plastics: A compre-
hensive environmental assessment. In Proceedings
of the 12th European conference on biomass for en-
ergy, industry, and climate protection, Vol. 2, edited
by W. Palz et al.
Gruber, P. R. 2003. Cargill Dow LLC. Journal of In-
dustrial Ecology 7(3–4): 209–213.
Patel, M., C. Bastioli, L. Marini, and E. Wu¨rdinger.
2003. Life-cycle assessment of biobased polymers
and natural fiber composites. In Biopolymers.
General aspects and special applications, Vol. 10,
edited by A. Steinbu¨chel. Weinheim, Germany:
Wiley.
Plinke, E., M. Schonert, H. Meckel, A. Detzel, J. Gie-
grich, H. Fehrenbach, A. Ostermayer, A. Schorb,
J. Heinisch, K. Luxenhofer, and S. Schmitz. 2000.
O¨ kobilanz fu¨r Getra¨nkeverpackungen. [LCA on
beverage containers.] Umweltbundesamt Berlin
(Hrsg.) Texte 37/00.
Sakai, K., M. Taniguchi, S. Miura, H. Ohara, T. Mat-
sumoto, and Y. Shirai. 2003. Making plastics from
garbage: A novel process for poly-l-lactate pro-
duction from municipal food waste. Journal of In-
dustrial Ecology 7(3–4): 63–74.
Vink, E. T. H., K. R. Ra´bago, D. A. Glassner, and P. R.
Gruber. 2003. Applications of life cycle assess-
ment to NatureWorks polylactide (PLA) produc-
tion. Polymer Degradation and Stability 80: 403–
419.
Vogt, R., F. Knappe, and A. Detzel. 2001. Environmen-
tal evaluation of systems for the recovery of biogenic
waste, presented at ORBIT, Seville, Spain, May.
Wu¨rdinger, E., U. Roth, G. A. Reinhardt, and A. De-
tzel. 2003. O¨ kobilanz fu¨r Loose-fill-Packmittel
aus Sta¨rke bzw. Polystyrol: Spezifische Ergebnisse.
[LCA for loose-fill packaging material from starch
and polystyrene, resp.: Specific results.] In Pro-
ceedings of the 8th Symposium Nachwachsende
Rohstoffe fu¨r die Chemie [Proceedings of the 8th
symposium on biobased materials for chemistry.]
About the Author
Ju¨rgen Geigrich is a researcher at the Institute for
Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg,
Germany, where he has been responsible for many
studies on waste management and biobased materials.
Address correspondence to:
Ju¨rgen Geigrich
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Wilckensstrasse 3
D-69120 Heidelberg
͗juergen.giegrich@ifeu.de͘
͗www.ifeu.de/͘