Use of natural fibers in bioplastic composites

Synthetic plastics have a vital role in our daily life for diverse applications like in the food, automotive, decorating, textile, and entertainment industries, among others. But, did you know that in 2019 it reached a production of 368 millions of tons? During its manufacture of plastics, carbon emissions are generated and other dangerous gases, not to mention that they take hundreds of years to degrade.

For that reason, great efforts continue to be made to reduce the use of synthetic plastics and promote the use of bio-based polymers. These comprise polymeric materials from renewable sources that can be processed to design synthetic plastic-like products with the desired structural and functional properties for the applications.

For this, the use of materials known as bio-composites is being evaluated, where one of its parts comes from a biological material and the other is commonly a synthetic polymer. biocompuestos, en donde una de sus partes proviene de un material biológico y la otra es comúnmente un polímero sintético.

In recent years, the use of natural fibers has increased in bio-composites for different applications. These can be obtained from different sources, like sub-products or agricultural industry disposals. Among the advantages of the use of natural fibers, it can be found their ecological character, low cost, low energy consumption and density, abundance, they are renewable, sustainable, wide variety, besides they are respectful with the environment. That’s why they can be used in different compounds, reducing costs and improving their properties.

Plant fibers can be obtained from leaves, stems, seeds, fruits, roots, grasses, cereal straw, and wood. Some of the fibers used are bamboo, plantain, coconut, henequen, pineapple, agave, jute, rice, avocado, orange, abaca, sugar cane, and more.

Our Penka products are elaborated with PolyAgave®, which is a bio-based bioplastic composite made of AGAVE FIBER and polypropylene, decreasing the consumption of petro plastics. Our products have various advantages like: circular economy, reduction of CO2 emissions₂ to the environment and is a recyclable and reusable material. We invite you to discover our line of products!

By: Andrea Zambrano