Banning Plastic Bags Boosts Bioplastics: Is a Biodegradable Car Coming?

jkraft — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

With the outlawing of plastic bags in San Francisco, China and other eco-minded cities and nations, shoppers are forming new carrying habits with canvas and compostable grocery sacks. It’s too bad for the manufacturers of the old plastics which languish for eons in landfills and clog our oceans, but it’s boom time for bags born from corn.

Biopolymers, which are naturally occurring polymers, and bioplastics—plastics made from organic, not fossil fuel components, aren’t new. Henry Ford actually developed a method of manufacturing plastic car parts from soybeans in the mid-1900s! Bioplastics can be made from corn, cotton, wood, wheat, soybeans and surprisingly, from bacteria, which carry out chemical reactions that result in a type of polyester. Some bioplastics can even be made out of pollution—excess CO2 binds to certain biopolymers.

Yet it takes a lot of petro-energy to manufacture these new plastics, so even though they are no longer made from petroleum-based materials, they still keep us shackled to our oil imports.

Improving efficiency in their production is a major concern, so researchers are refining the production processes used in order to make them viable alternatives to petrochemical plastics. But consumers and manufacturers are already showing their preference for compostables instead of disposables, and McKinsey & Co. estimates the field will be worth more than $100 billion by 2010.

Even Electronics makers like Sony and Fujitsu intend to use bio-polymers for portable music players, laptops and other products. Toyota has plans for a biodegradable car, and specialized medical devices like heart stents and emerging technology such as solar cells are already available in compost-ready form.