An Exploration of Future of Bioplastics and Their Physical, Chemical and Biological Characteristics

Abstract

Recently, petroleum-based plastic has become an integral part of human lives; however, its imperishable nature makes it the leading pollutant in solid waste, creating serious environmental problems. Inadequate plastic waste management increases the toxicity of landfills and causes air and marine pollution. Several initiatives have been started to overcome these challenges. Its replacement with bio-degradable plastic is one of the upcoming solutions. This study is carried out to shed light on the past, present, and future research trends in the bioplastic arena. Such a study is important for bioplastic-related research to be made available at a single source with in-depth anal-ysis. This study has used 3,802 publications extracted from the Web of Science core collection databases using various combinations of search strings. VOSviewer was used to analyzing this data. With the help of various analysis techniques available with VOSviewer, many types of analysis (e.g., predominantly used material, tested properties of bioplastic etc.) were carried out. Through this study, the develop-ment and various aspect of bioplastic been investigated.

Keywords: bioplastic manufacturing process, bioplastic properties, biopolymers, VOSviewer, application