Eunomia has published the Phase 1 report of a two-phase study examining how EU product legislation can create demand for bio-based plastics. The study was commissioned by a seven-member industry consortium comprising Arkema, Avantium, Borealis (Borouge International), Braskem, Neste, UPM and Vioneo, and has been conducted independently by Eunomia, drawing on public evidence, academic literature and structured consultation with industry and policy stakeholders.
Bio-based plastics have been commercially available for more than a decade, yet they account for around one percent of global plastic production. The report examines why this gap has persisted and what demand-side policy instruments can do to close it. It focuses on four priority sectors: packaging, textiles, construction and automotive.
Phase 1 establishes the analytical foundation for the study. It sets out:
- a problem definition grounded in the specific market failures preventing scale-up;
- a mapping of the EU legislative landscape and the operative bio-based plastics hooks within it, including PPWR Article 8, ESPR delegated acts and the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation;
- a baseline assessment of supply, cost and environmental performance;
- a policy option architecture spanning multiple legislative instruments; and
- an analytical demonstrator assessing bio-based feedstock-use targets for plastic packaging.
The demonstrator finds that a 10% bio-based feedstock-use target for packaging would create a meaningful demand signal while adding less than 1% to retail product prices across the formats assessed. Estimated greenhouse gas savings are approximately 8.2 to 8.6 million tonnes of CO2e per year, and land requirements remain modest at this scale.
Phase 2 will build on this architecture with full quantitative modelling across the priority sectors, delegated-act-ready policy specifications, and detailed mass balance and chain-of-custody rules.
