Biomass from oil palm plantations can be used as raw material to produce environmentally friendly bioplastics, which can be the substitute of plastics from fossil fuels that are not friendly to the environment.
Plastics are widely used in many industries, which include packaging industry, food and beverage, automotive, toys, furniture, house utensils and various kinds of shopping bags. Indonesia needs around 5.0 million tons of plastics per year with an annual growth of averagely 5.0 percent.
Currently, plastics are produced from two derivatives of fossil fuels, namely polypropylene and polyethylene, which are non-degradable, toxic, pollutive and potential to cause health problems.
Hundred thousand tons of pollutive plastics are dumped to the environment every year. It is worth noting that currently, Indonesia is the world’s second largest polluter after China in terms of the use of the environmentally dirty plastics.
Besides polluting the environment, around 50 percent of the plastic raw materials produced in Indonesia are still imported. Every year, Indonesia has to spend a total foreign exchange of around USD7.0 billion to import the pollutive raw materials. So, besides polluting the environment and harming people’s health, it has also expended Indonesia’s foreign exchange in big amount. It is now time for us to stop the production and use of the fossil-fuel-based plastics and turn to the use of bioplastics from biomass derived from oil palm plantations.
Indonesia has a total oil palm plantation areas of 11 million hectares and produce CPO and PKO at around 35 million tons per year. Besides the palm oil, every year the plantations also produce around 167 million tons of biomass, consisting of empty fruit bunches, mesocarp fibers, palm tree trunks, leaves and shells which are available throughout the year.
The biomass, especially the empty bunches and mesocarp fibers, are regularly collected in palm oil mills, so that no cost needed to collect them.
A number of universities and research institutions have conducted many researches on the oil-palm-based bioplastics. So, it will not take long time to replace the use of pollutive plastics with the green bio-plastics if the government is serious to support the development of the green bioplastic industries. By relying only on the oil palm biomass, it will not be difficult for Indonesia to produce 6.0 million tons of bioplastics per year.
The green bioplastics from oil-palm biomass are superior if compared to the conventional plastics from fossil fuels. Being degradable in nature, the green bioplastics will not pollute the environment. Made of organic material, the green bioplastics are also not toxic or harmful to human health. Besides, the production and use of the bioplastics will save foreign exchange around USD7.0 billion as there will be no need to import. Even better, there is a possibility for Indonesia to become a producer and exporter of bioplastic pellets in the future.
It now depends on the government to support the development of the bioplastic industry. Experts in our universities have conducted many research and development projects of the bioplastics. If the government provide financial support and conducive policy, then the bioplastic industry will grow robustly.
The green NGOs, which care for the environmental conservation, should support the development of the oil-palm-based bioplastic industry.
Source : PASPI
