Pukkelpop coins made up of plant waste

It requires fossil fuels and a lot of energy, it is in thousands of products, in nature and in our bodies: plastic. B4Plastics makes a sustainable alternative. ‘The industry is hesitant to change. So we are showing the way forward,’ says founder and bioengineer Stefaan De Wildeman.

‘The world is mostly plastic.
It’s in a staggering amount of stuff, from toys and packaging to toothpaste and shampoo to clothing, cars, gardening and farming equipment and paint.
And there is more and more of it: production reached 50 million tonnes in 1976; 370.5 million tonnes in 2018 and 400.3 million tonnes in 2022.Half of it is single-use. Because it does not biodegrade well, all that plastic accumulates in the environment for hundreds of years.

Plastic is also a source of greenhouse gas because it is made from fossil fuels such as petroleum and it is burnt or landfilled after use. A recent US government study shows that plastic production emits four times more greenhouse gases than the aviation industry and accounts for almost a third of the global carbon budget.

Abandon job

‘It’s madness,’ says Stefaan De Wildeman. ‘A story we cannot possibly tell our children.’ The bio-engineer worked in the chemical sector for 12 years and gave up his job six years ago to found B4Plastics in Dilsen-Stokkem.

The company, which has already won prestigious environmental awards, makes polymeric materials (building blocks for plastics) from monomers (smaller building blocks) derived from natural or renewable resources, such as side streams from the agricultural and food industries. Examples include residues from sugar beet processing and vegetable oils.

‘So technically this appears to be quite possible,’ says De Wildeman. “But in traditional industry, motivation is still minimal when you have to tinker with the economic picture. Since I was always told that there was no alternative possible, I just started doing it myself.”

As he shows off the test plots, the inspired entrepreneur waves a thin, light yellow curved plastic wire and proudly says: “This is the world’s first fully biodegradable trim wire. Why do you always need new rolls of trimming wire in your garden? Because the plastic pulverises when mowing and all those microplastics end up in nature.”

Biodegradable trimming line

From Thursday, Pukkelpoppers can also test a product from the young company: B4Plastics will supply 450,000 ECO-coins to the festival to make the change of reusable cups smooth.
And next spring, biodegradable trimming wire will hit the market. Biodegradable fishing nets and brushes and the first biodegradable shaving foam are also in the pipeline.

Shaving foam contains polyethylene glycol, an ingredient for polymers. An analysis by VITO shows that the alternative made by B4Plastics causes about 79 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions. For an alternative to polyvinyl alcohol, which is found in films for dishwasher tablets, among other things, it is about 70 per cent less.

This is not only due to the natural source material. Production is also more climate-friendly: B4Plastics makes some polymers at room temperature, whereas it usually does so at at least 200 degrees Celsius. ‘And much less transport is needed when customers have their polymers made here instead of importing them from Asia,’ says De Wildeman.

After six years of testing, B4Plastics is now starting as a full-fledged producer delivering multiton orders and has plans for further scale-up. Thanks to sales, grants and its own additional capital, the company is in good financial shape.

Part of the revenue also comes from the research that B4Plastics sells. Big brands like Patagonia (which makes clothing from recycled fabrics) commission research to make a particular material that they want the unique rights to. Because B4Plastics now has a library of some 600 new biopolymers, it usually succeeds in those orders. Buyers of certain plastic products can now also order trucks full of granules directly from the company.

Still, these are not easy times.

For instance, many large chemical companies are still thanking to make B4Plastics products in their plants. The current political and social climate and the fierce competition with bargain plastic from Asia also make things difficult at the moment.

For now, most B4Plastics products are also still ten to 50 per cent more expensive than their fossil counterparts. “And now that “purchasing power” is the priority everywhere and big companies are watering down green ambitions, B4Plastics has selected some products to enter the market at a very limited additional cost. In terms of sustainability, they are a “valuable intermediate” and still more sustainable than the fossil alternatives. ‘We will open a lot of doors with that,’ says the CEO. ‘The big herds come off on low cost.’

What will also help, of course, is legislation banning the “plain” version of products as soon as there are proven sustainable alternatives.

Meanwhile, the entrepreneur draws hope from the launch of the unique trimming wire, a dozen patents, more innovations to come and the first biodegradable underground pipes. ‘I have to do this,’ he says. ‘Much rather this than chasing financial gain and then saying it wasn’t about change.’