What is a circular economy?

It is an alternative production and consumption system that replaces the make, use, and dispose linear economy. In practice, it leverages resources to achieve maximum value by recovering and reusing materials.

It is short for bioplastics, which are plastic materials made from renewable biomass sources like hemp, straw, woodchips, vegetable derivatives, and even food waste.

It is a better recycling process that returns materials to their original reusable form without degrading the production value. Aluminum cans are an example of upcycling because it recovers virgin aluminum that can be used again for food packaging. Research today now focuses on creating virgin resins from plastics.

These natural resources have not been previously used. Timber, petroleum-based plastic resins, and mineral ores are all virgin materials used to create consumer and industrial products. Research success is now beginning to reprocess plastics into virgin resins suitable for food packaging.