Bioplastic Boom Educator Guide

In a cornfield west of Lincoln, Nebraska dark green stalks rise chest-high from the soil and wind around the hill in perfect rows. Sunlight flashes on the leaves as they brush against each other in a gust of wind. The field will produce thousands of bushels of corn to be used in products ranging from cattle feed and corn syrup to ethanol and even plastic.

About 75 miles away, at a facility near Blair, Nebraska a constant rushing sound comes from long tubes that lead to gleaming steel silos. It sounds like kernels of corn, but it is actually millions of small plastic pellets. The pellets are plastic resin – the raw material for everything from food containers to carpet. For the last 10 years, a company called Nature Works has used corn, instead of oil or natural gas, to make “bioplastic” near Blair. Nature Works is partially owned by the giant ag corporation, Cargill, and makes more bioplastic than any company in the world. Steve Bray is Director of Manufacturing.

“The capacity of the plant is 300 million pounds of polymer per year,” Bray said.

The bioplastic plant has not yet reached that capacity, but it is getting close.

“In the first three years of operation we saw triple-digit growth,” he said. “Almost every year it’s been double-digit growth. When the worldwide economy fell in 2008-2009 that slowed us down, but even then we had growth. Now that the economy is coming back we’re seeing very strong growth again.”

Nature Works production grew in the range of 20-30% in the last year. That kind of growth is happening across the bioplastic industry. Kent Furst is an analyst with the market research firm, the Freedonia Group, based in Cleveland. He says even traditional plastic makers are investing bioplastic.

“Whether you look at it in pounds or dollars, it’s really growing very fast,” Furst said. “We expect the industry to double in size in the next 3 or 4 years.”

That kind of growth is impressive, but bioplastics are actually less than 1 percent of the overall plastics market. Still, Furst says bioplastics are beating even the most optimistic forecasts. So why are companies using more bioplastic now? Furst says consumer interest is part of it. More people are shopping for sustainability. But it is the price of oil that is making it affordable for manufacturers to make the switch.

“With the price of oil and natural gas in the early part of the last decade being so low, you didn’t see as much actual market interest in bioplastics,” Furst said. “But as the price of oil and natural gas rose in the later part of the decade I think that’s when you saw how fast bioplastics could be competitive with conventional plastics on price.”

Searching the shelves of a supermarket in Lincoln, Nebraska it is still difficult to find bioplastic, but a couple examples show how some major corporations are beginning to buy in. A bag of Sun Chips is made by Frito-Lay, which is owned by Pepsi Co. The bag is made from Nature Works bioplastic, so both the container and the food inside are made of corn. Pepsi also announced that it is developing a 100% plant-based soda bottle. An Odwalla juice bottle made by Pepsi’s rival, Coca-Cola, is made with bioplastic from the Brazilian company, Braskem. They make plastic from sugar cane. Coke also announced it is coming out with a soda bottle that is 30% bioplastic.

But not all biplastics are made equal and that could start to cause some problems as they become more common. Paul Fowler, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Technology, describes a growing bioplastics divide.

“Bioplastic could mean that the material is biodegradable, or it could mean that it’s bio-based, or it could mean that it’s both,” Fowler said.

The differences in chemistry among bioplastics mean that some plant-based containers are biodegradable but hard to recycle. Others are easy to recycle but do not biodegrade.

Take, for instance, the Sun Chips bag made from Nature Works bioplastic, called PLA for polylactic acid. What sets PLA apart is that it is completely biodegradable, in the right conditions. But not many recyclers handle PLA because it can contaminate the traditional recycling stream.

The Odwalla bottle on the other hand is made from Braskem bioplastic. It is made from sugar, but after it has been used it is no different from a bottle made from oil. It can be recycled almost anywhere in the country, but it does not biodegrade. So to compost or recycle? Fowler says there is room for both.

“If you consider the landscape for all the various products that are made from plastics, then there is a space for everyone within that landscape,” Fowler said.

But Fowler says it does leave consumers with a lot to learn. As more bioplastic shows up on grocery store shelves, sustainable minded consumers will need to be prepared to choose from new shades of green.

Additional Links:

• Nature Works picks Asia for second bioplastic
• Nestle looks at bioplastic
• 2011 Biopolymers Symposium

A sample of switchgrass at Sandia National
Laboratories

So when QUEST decided to move forward on producing a story about biofuels, I welcomed the opportunity to assist Series Producer Josh Rosen in its crafting. Being QUEST, we weren't content to merely renumerate the different kinds of biofuels and how cellulosic ethanol is more efficient than corn-based ethanol. Instead, our story focuses on the pioneering work being done by researchers affiliated with the Joint BioEnergy Initiative (JBEI), a multi-billion dollar research initiative based in Emeryville, as they look beyond ethanol to the next generation of biofuels. So not only is JBEI looking at various feedstocks like switchgrass, rice, poplar and innovative ways to “deconstruct” the cellulosic material, it also attempts to synthesize fuels that work more efficiently in America's automotive fleet, still overwhelmingly reliant on gasoline.

But even top researchers at JBEI like Jay Keasling and Blake Simmons caution that this next generation of biofuels won't be coming online for years. Moreover, new research suggests that the net production cycle of biofuels, from the clear-cutting of trees to grow the crops to their transport to markets far away, may yield as many or more emissions as the use of petroleum-based fuel. A recent Op-Ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle by UC Berkeley Alex Farrell cites the reason for this as primarily one of production– the way we clear land for growing biofuels, as well as our emphasis on the use of food-based crops like corn and soybean, which aren't terribly efficient sources of ethanol to begin with.

Tad Patzek, also at UC Berkeley, has been an ardent critic of the carbon-neutral reputation of biofuels, garnering controversy for conducting studies that some other researchers have criticized for their calculations of emissions arising from biofuel production. (See Patzek's co-authored article on page 19 of the March 2007 edition of Energy Tribune). Earlier this year, a study by researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute suggests that biofuels are not created equal, as those made from U.S. corn, Malaysian palm oil and Brazilian soy yield more emissions than their petroleum-based counterparts, given the environmental damage they reap when grown for fuel. The study cites recycled cooking oil and biofuel made from grassy and woody cellulosic material as being more intelligent choices for cutting down on emissions.

And so the debate continues, struggling to keep pace with the technological progress made by scientists toiling away in their quest to find the holy grail of an efficient, cheap and environmentally-friendly biofuel.

Watch the "Biofuels: Beyond Ethanol" TV Story online, as well as find additional links and resources.

Sheraz Sadiq is an Associate Producer for QUEST on KQED Television.

37.850783 -122.294830

Some have dubbed it the "doomsday vault"; others, taking a more positive tone, call it a repository of biodiversity. However you look at it, the Global Seed Vault is a fortress. Buried under almost 500 feet of Arctic permafrost, secured against bomb blasts, earthquakes, and potential thieves, this massive seed bank, which will ultimately include samples of a large portion of the world's plant varieties, is our high-tech hope for preserving the genetic diversity that underlies the world's food supply. But despite its scope, the seed vault isn't enough.

Why a seed bank in the first place? Because industrial farming approaches have made what was once a plethora of diverse crops into something more like a set of monocultures, carefully bred to meet our standards for long distance travel, high yields, and resistance to bug and weed killers. Many scientists fear that climate change will threaten these crops, which provide us with a huge proportion of our food.

To keep growing enough food, we'll have to breed new plant varieties that fare better in higher temperatures, or in depleted soil, or under whatever challenging conditions a particular crop faces. For that, plant breeders will need to tap the genetic diversity that exists among the many varieties of any given plant. A gene that makes one kind of rice grow well in sandy soil, for example, can be transferred to another kind of rice. This is why preserving each and every variety of plant food is essential to securing our food supply.

But a seed bank, vital as it is, falls short. Why? Because how and what we eat is as much about who we are as it is about the seeds we put in the ground. We're missing something if we believe we're saving ourselves simply by saving seeds.

Don't get me wrong: Genetic diversity in edible plants is the toolbox nature gives us to feed ourselves with, and preserving it by saving seeds is central to our ability to grow and develop new crops. But, as Michael Pollan articulates in his latest book In Defense of Food, the way we eat is attached to our cultures, beliefs, languages, and rituals. We learn about growing and eating food from people who came before us, and that knowledge is as important as the food itself.

The (necessary) sterility of a seed bank doesn't capture the messy, many-threaded ways in which food and agriculture are incorporated into a society. A seed bank doesn't preserve the knowledge of how to grow its precious population, or how farming crops cooperatively might produce different results than farming them individually, or even how to make the plants into edible dishes.

If we want to ensure our food supply, we need to do more than freeze seeds. We need to also take careful notes about culture.

I began thinking about this several years ago, when I had the privilege of visiting a seed bank operated by a group called Native Seeds/SEARCHin Tucson, Arizona, when I was working on a piece about seed saving for our Science of Gardening Web site. Native Seeds/SEARCH Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) was founded in 1983, when Native Americans in the region wanted to grow traditional crops and couldn't locate seeds. Since then, the organization has grown to include 4500 farmers and thousands of seed varieties developed by Native Americans in the Southwest.

NS/S doesn't just save seeds: they save the knowledge that goes with them. NS/S farmers continually plant and grow handfuls of the seed bank's reserve, refreshing the seed stock and passing along knowledge of how to best grow a particular plant. NS/S employees also collect stories from and share knowledge with Native people in the region.

Now, I'm no farmer, but it seems to me that safeguarding both the "agri-" and "-culture" of plant varieties will help us get the most out of the seeds we've saved. Otherwise, we end up seeing the security of our food as little more than a sterile set of seeds stored in a deep freeze, ready to be accessed for answers when our old farming technologies get us in trouble. But feeding ourselves is hardly a sterile affair: we grow, prepare, and consume food in a complex context of environment and humanity. I, for one, think our tendency to dismiss that larger picture is what's gotten us into this biodiversity problem in the first place.

Robin Marks is a journalist and science writer who current serves as a Multimedia Projects Developer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.