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Overview / Routes / Drop-ins, mass balance & biocomposites

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Drop-ins, mass balance & biocomposites

Bio-PE/PP/PET/PA, mass-balance attributed products and biofilled fossil polymers - tracked, never counted as new bio-based polymers.

Scope: Bio-PE/PP/PET/PA, ISCC PLUS mass balance, biofilled fossil polymers. Shown separately and labelled.

Scope review. Items here are tracked and labelled, but never presented as new bio-based polymers. A biofiller in a fossil matrix is a composite, not a bio-based polymer.

What it is

Drop-in polymers have the same chemical structure as their fossil counterparts. Siracusa and Blanco review bio-PE, bio-PP and bio-PET as bio-based polymers analogous to petroleum-derived ones.

Mass-balance attribution assigns a bio-based share to products through chain-of-custody bookkeeping. The European Commission's policy framework states that this method is not considered suitable for confirming the actual share of bio-based content.

A bio-based filler in a fossil polymer matrix is a composite, not a new bio-based polymer.

Chemistry summary

Drop-ins share structures with incumbents (for example ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid in PET), so chemistry gives no new performance - the change is in feedstock.

monomer

Ethylene glycol (MEG)

Diol of PEF and PET; can be fossil- or bio-based.

OCCO

PubChem CID 174 · source

monomerfossil/drop-in benchmark

Terephthalic acid

Fossil/drop-in benchmark: the PET diacid that FDCA replaces in PEF.

OC(=O)c1ccc(cc1)C(=O)O

PubChem CID 7489 · source

Drawn from SMILES with RDKit and verified against PubChem. Full structure library →

Synthesis and production

Bio-ethanol to ethylene for bio-PE; bio-based ethylene glycol for partly bio-based PET; mass-balance allocation in shared crackers.

Property profile

Same as the fossil counterpart for true drop-ins.

Sourced property table (ND where no value is quoted) →

End-of-life profile

Each attribute is recorded separately and never inferred from another.

Bio-based originMeasured (radiocarbon) or attributed (mass balance) - always record which.
BiodegradabilityBio-based plastics are not necessarily biodegradable or compostable (European Commission).
CompostabilityNot assumed.
RecyclabilityUsually the same stream as the fossil counterpart.

Key players

None listed. Organisations are named here only when a checked development or cited source names them.

Typical applications
same as incumbents

Open challenges

  • Claim accounting - measured bio-based carbon versus mass-balance attribution.
  • Feedstock sustainability and land use.

Cross-cutting: Bio-based content & claim accounting (C14 vs mass balance) · Feedstock availability, land use & variability · Comparable climate footprint

Quoted support for this page (1)
  • bio-based polymers analogous to petroleum-derived ones [Siracusa 2020]

Each quote is re-checked against the published abstract in CI.

Monthly track

October 2026 in progress · scanned through 2026-10-20

No checked developments.

Machine-triaged leads (1)

September 2026

No checked developments.

Machine-triaged leads (0)

No machine-triaged leads above the relevance threshold.

References

  1. Siracusa V., Blanco I. (2020). Bio-Polyethylene (Bio-PE), Bio-Polypropylene (Bio-PP) and Bio-Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (Bio-PET): Recent Developments in Bio-Based Polymers Analogous to Petroleum-Derived Ones for Packaging and Engineering Applications. Polymers. doi:10.3390/polym12081641 review
  2. Nakajima H., Dijkstra P., Loos K. (2017). The Recent Developments in Biobased Polymers toward General and Engineering Applications: Polymers that are Upgraded from Biodegradable Polymers, Analogous to Petroleum-Derived Polymers, and Newly Developed. Polymers. doi:10.3390/polym9100523 review
  3. Lambert S., Wagner M. (2017). Environmental performance of bio-based and biodegradable plastics: the road ahead. Chemical Society Reviews. doi:10.1039/C7CS00149E review

Full literature list →