All companies in an industry compete with industries that produce alternative products, which limit the potential benefits of an industry by setting pricing caps on the profits companies in the industry can make. The more attractive the price performance options offered by alternatives, the lower the upper limit of industry profits.

There are five kinds of natural degradable pulp molded tableware substitutes: foamed plastic, photodegradable plastic, plant fiber, starch blending, and paperboard. These five kinds of products and pulp tableware together constitute a disposable tableware market.

1. Foamed plastics (Polystyrene EPS)

Was an early disposable tableware, it produced in convenient to eat at the same time, a series of problems, mainly displays in: with its costumes hot soup water, they contain bisphenol a class of toxins such as precipitation, harm the person immersed in food, especially in the production of foam tableware raw materials, such as chroma of harmful substances, poisoning, and you cannot do cause great harm to human body; It takes one to two hundred years for it to degrade in nature. After entering the soil, discarded tableware will not rot for a long time, but also affect the permeability of the soil, thereby damaging the soil. Waste tableware burning will release more than ten kinds of chemical toxic gas, serious pollution to the atmosphere. Therefore, with the rapid development of fast food industry, a global environmental problem "white pollution" arises. In this regard, China has repeatedly banned the production and use of foamed plastic tableware. But due to its good usability and low price, foamed snack box there is no oil leakage water leakage problem, sold only 0.05 0.08 yuan each, and the cost of a paper tableware in 0.2 to 0.3 yuan, therefore, in our country are still flooding the market, is currently on the market dosage is larger, accounts for about 60% of the market, but its exit the market of disposable tableware is inevitable, just a matter of time.

2. Photodegradable plastics

This kind of tableware basically is to add some additive in plastic product production process (be like starch, biological detoxify agent to wait), add starch inside degradable plastic to be called biodegradable plastic, add photosensitizer to be called photodegradable plastic, add starch and photosensitizer to be called double degradable plastic at the same time. It has good performance indexes, but biodegradable plastics can not be completely degraded into the molecular state, can only be degraded into small pieces, there is pollution to the environment, photodegradable plastics and dual-degradable plastics in the photosensitizer have different degrees of toxicity, the United States in 1995 was explicitly specified that the photodegradable plastics can not be used in food packaging.

This kind of tableware is the substitute of foamed plastic tableware earlier, the craft is mature, the efficiency is high, at the beginning of 80 time 90 time, had been promoted vigorously in our country, because its certain degradation performance is called environmental protection tableware. However, with the progress of the society, its environmental protection has been questioned more and more, but there are still different interpretations of the definition of environmental protection in China, so degradable plastic tableware is widely used.

3. Plant fibers

It is mainly made of bagasse, straw, wheat straw, etc., through grinding, batching, pressurized molding and other processes, which completely meet the requirements of environmental protection. However, it has the following problems: the thermal molding process is adopted, the formula contains gum ingredients, the biodegradation process of the product is extremely slow, the cost is also high, and the price is about 0.3-0.5 yuan per product. The production efficiency of this process is low, generally more than 2.5 minutes to complete one. Luster brightness is not beautiful. The tableware made of this kind of raw materials has an obvious shortage, that is, the plant mainly relies on the stalk to absorb pesticides in the growth process, and the amount of pesticides in the stalk is large, which is difficult to pass the national testing standards. This kind of product is still in the development stage because of its immature production process and high product cost, and rarely enters the market.

4. Starch mixture

The tableware is plants such as corn, potato starch as the raw material, made of, its biodegradability is unmatched by other synthetic materials, also known as full biodegradable material, but its due to technical issues, production products on the waterproof performance is difficult to solve, and the production cost is high, so use fewer on the market, is also in the development stage.

5. Cardboard

This kind of tableware is non-toxic, harmless and pollution-free. But its technology is the paperboard roll shear molding, the form of the product is single, there are soft and waterproof quality, oil-proof performance problems. And its raw materials for cardboard, need to meet the waterproof, oil, grease and other physical and chemical requirements of wood fiber materials, and cutting a lot of wood, will cause ecological damage. Due to its simple production process and low price, it is widely used in paper cups, paper barrels and paper plates, but with the protection of forest resources, its price is getting higher and higher.

Foamed plastics products obsolete, but when its real strength is directly related to exit the market and government regulation, and because of its low price and high market share and limit the pulp tableware industry environmental protection industry profits, and a direct impact on the growth and foamed plastic tableware's exit will be thoroughly the pulp for the development of environmental protection tableware industry bigger opportunities.