Open Journal of Polymer Chemistry, 2018, 8, 21-33 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpchem ISSN Online: 2165-6711 ISSN Print: 2165-6681 DOI: 10.4236/ojpchem.2018.82003 May 30, 2018 21 Open Journal of Polymer Chemistry Starch Based Bio-Plastics: The Future of Sustainable Packaging Ravindra V. Gadhave, Abhijit Das, Prakash A. Mahanwar, Pradeep T. Gadekar Department Polymer and Surface Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India Abstract Petroleum derived plastics dominate the food packaging industry even today. These materials have brought a lot of convenience and attraction to agro, food and packaging industry. These materials also have brought along with them problems relating to the safe-disposal and renewability of these materials. Due to the growing concern over environmental problems of these materials, in- terest has shifted towards the development and promoting the use of “bio-plastics”. Bio-plastic is a term used for sustainable packaging materials derived from renewable resources i.e. produced from agro/food sources, ma- terials such as starch, cellulose, etc. and which are considered safe to be used in food applications. To enhance the mechanical properties, and water barrier properties, it can be blended easily with other polymer as well as nano fillers. The current paper is a review of the progress of research in starch based sus- tainable packaging materials. Keywords Bioplastic, Starch, Packaging, Sustainable 1. Introduction Reason for transition from synthetic plastic materials to biobased plastic mate- rials Synthetic polymers or petrochemical-based plastics like polyamides (PA), ny- lon, polystyrene (PS), Teflon, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE) etc. have been widely used for food packaging applications due to their ex- cellent thermal and rheological properties, lightweight, easy to manipulate, and install in a diverse range of applications, gas and water barrier properties, es- thetic qualities, and cost [1]. The oil that is used as a raw material, as well as the oil required for energy, consumes between six to eight percent of the total world How to cite this paper: Gadhave, R.V., Das, A., Mahanwar, P.A. and Gadekar, P.T. (2018) Starch Based Bio-Plastics: The Fu- ture of Sustainable Packaging. Open Jour- nal of Polymer Chemistry, 8, 21-33. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojpchem.2018.82003 Received: March 10, 2018 Accepted: May 27, 2018 Published: May 30, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access