The application of biomass, such as starch, cellulose, wood, and sugar, used to substitute fossil resources for the production of plastics, is a widely accepted strategy towards sustainable development. In fact, this way a significant reduction of non renewable energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission is accomplished. In recent years, several typologies of bioplastics were introduced and the most important are those based on cellulosic esters, starch derivatives, polyhydroxybutyrate, polylactic acid, and polycaprolactone. Nowadays, the most important tool to evaluate the environmental impact of a (bio)plastic is the life cycle assessment that determines the overall impact of a plastic on the environment by defining and analyzing several impact categories index like the global warming; the human toxicity; the abiotic depletion; the eutrophication; the acidification; and many others directly related to the production, utilization, and disposal of the considered plastics. The aim of this work is to present a comparison between bioplastics and conventional plastics through the use of the “Life Cycle Assessment” methodology. In particular, the life cycle assessment's Cradle to Grave of shoppers made from Mater-Bi (starch-based plastic) an polyethylene were reported and compared as a case study in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the bioplastics and the conventional plastics.

‘Hydrogen as the energy carrier of the future’ has been a topic discussed for decades and is today the subject of a new revival, especially driven by the investments in renewable electricity and the technological efforts done by high-developed industrial powers, such as Northern Europe and Japan. Although hydrogen production from renewable resources is still limited to small scale, local solutions, and R&D projects; steam reforming (SR) of natural gas at industrial scale is the cheapest and most used technology and generates around 8 kg CO₂ per kg H₂. This paper is focused on the process optimization and decarbonization of H₂ production from fossil fuels to promote more efficient approaches based on membrane separation. In this work, two emerging configurations have been compared from the numerical point of view: the membrane reactor (MR) and the reformer and membrane module (RMM), proposed and tested by this research group. The rate of hydrogen production by SR has been calculated according to other literature works, a one-dimensional model has been developed for mass, heat, and momentum balances. For the membrane modules, the rate of hydrogen permeation has been estimated according to mass transfer correlation previously reported by this research group and based on previous experimental tests carried on in the first RMM Pilot Plant. The methane conversion, carbon dioxide yield, temperature, and pressure profile are compared for each configuration: SR, MR, and RMM. By decoupling the reaction and separation section, such as in the RMM, the overall methane conversion can be increased of about 30% improving the efficiency of the system.