The Bioplastic Library of Polymers (BLoP): A Raman and μATR-FTIR Spectroscopy Library for Detection of Bioplastics

Bioplastics, biobased or biodegradable polymers, have begun to be adopted as an alternative to petroleum-based plastics. Despite their growing use, research on the occurrence of these materials in the environment as pollution is nascent. Here, we provide a library of bioplastic spectra known as the Bioplastic Library of Polymers (BLoP), intended to improve the detection of bioplastic materials in environmental samples by using Raman spectroscopy and attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (μATR-FTIR). BLoP contains spectra collected from 31 items across 8 different bioplastic polymers acquired from a variety of consumer goods currently on the market. We used samples of suspected bioplastics to validate the ability of BLoP to identify bioplastics. Using our library, we were able to confirm the material type as bioplastic for 79% of samples with Raman and 96% of samples with μATR-FTIR. When testing these suspected bioplastic samples with BLoP and other standard commercial libraries, 75 and 73% of the top five library matches were entries from BLoP for Raman and μATR-FTIR, respectively. This library is intended to be used in conjunction with other commercial and open-access libraries to improve the detection of bioplastic materials in the environment.