European Bioplastics gears up for 8th edition of conference
Policy developments and market achievements will also be discussed at the conference, which will feature roughly 40 speakers including representatives from Metabolix, Clariant and NatureWorks. The event will also feature an adjoining product exhibition – with around 30 exhibitors – and a new partnering tool to facilitate networking opportunities.
“The 8th European Bioplastics Conference will once again provide the most efficient opportunity within Europe to network with heads of the bioplastics industry and to gain an overview of the current situation in the industry,” commented Hasso von Pogrell, managing director of European Bioplastics.
As the European Bioplastics association notes, bioplastics play an important role in Europe’s biobased future and are ‘mature, available, in high demand, and easy to dispose of and recover.’
They reduce the environmental impact of a product while offering at least a comparable performance to conventional plastics, and in the cosmetics sector, have been used by companies including Shiseido and Procter & Gamble to package products.
Bioplastics materials and sustainability
For the 2013 edition of the conference, there will be over 25 presentations from companies, scientists and policy makers. The sessions lined up include ‘bioplastics materials’, ‘sustainability for bioplastics’ and ‘end of life’.
The two keynote speeches kicking off the event on 10 December will look at options for sustainability assessment of biobased applications and provide an overview of the development of the bioplastics industry in Thailand.
Later in the day, James Wang of Kimberly-Clark will deliver a session entitled Bioplastics for Sustainable Application, and Beate Treffler of Clariant will hold a session called Multifunctional Processing Aids for PLA Injection Molding.
On the second day of the conference, Rolf Hogan from the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials will host a panel discussion exploring how a global certification scheme for bioplastics works in practice.
Elsewhere, Thomas Werner of DuPont will host a session entitled Performance Polymers – Technical Benefits and new functionality with bio-based solutions, while Benjamin Brehmer of Evonik Industries will present Vestamid Terra: new Application Fields of Bio-based Polyamides.
For more information about the event, please click here.
