Avantium, a Dutch maker of bottles and food packaging, is planning to attempt to replace the millions of tons of plastic containers created annually with items made entirely from plant sugars (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/the-end-of-plastic-new-plant-based-bottles-will-degrade-in-a-year). The big advantage of the new containers (apparently supported by a number of important manufacturers of soft drinks and yoghourts) is that they are said to degrade in a year. In contrast, plastics take decades to weather into microplastics, which are a real concern as nobody knows how long they last or where they finish up in the food chain. Another benefit is that plants will have to be grown to produce the sugars (temporarily removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). Plastics, of course, require the extraction of petrochemicals to provide their building blocks adding to greenhouse gas release.
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