View from the Hill
Environmental Product Solutions Polylactic Acid (PLA)
The past few years have seen a move by many In an attempt to meet all of the environmental issues
involved in the hospitality industry towards providing surrounding the production of standard plastics, namely the
solutions to issues surrounding environmental impact. Our depletion of fossil fuels, the emissions of greenhouse gases,
industry is driven by government targets on ‘sustainable and the disposal of solid waste in landfill, an alternative
development’ and the desire by consumers to ‘do their bit’ plastic called Polylactic Acid (PLA) has started to be mass-
for the environment away from home as well as the produced. PLA is produced by extracting sugars from corn
recycling objectives that we are being encouraged to starch, sugar beet or wheat starch, fermenting it into lactic
achieve at home. acid, and then converting it into chains of plastic, or
polymerised lactic acid (PLA).
“We need a major shift to deliver new products and
services with lower environmental impacts across their The sustainability of PLA seems appealing when
life cycle….and we need to build on people’s growing considering the abundance of agricultural resources in
awareness of social and environmental concerns, and developed countries; versus the quickly diminishing oil
the importance of their roles as citizens and reserves in the same locations.
consumers”.
Despite the immediate benefits of substituting a finite
Securing the Future, UK Government Sustainable
resource for a sustainable one, the energy required to
Development Strategy 2005
produce PLA is significantly higher than most petrochemical
Much of the development work on green product solutions processes. Therefore, the positive impact on fossil fuel
has occurred within the Catering Disposables and consumption is partially negated by their burning in the
Packaging categories, where issues of sustainability and production of PLA, although subsequent CO
2
emissions are
bio-degradability are all important. This is based on the fact offset by the fact that corn will absorb CO
2
during its growth.
that the production of plastics such as Polypropylene (PP), It could therefore potentially be argued that the production
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) and Polystryene (PS) are of PLA is 'carbon neutral'.
heavily reliant on the use of fossil fuels (approximately 270
million tonnes of oil and gas every year worldwide). A
situation compounded by the fact that after use, a large
proportion of product will end up being deposited in landfill
sites.
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