STEP #36

Buy Bioplastics

Imagine if we could make plastic from corn instead of oil. Considering the countless plastic and polymers used in so many products—from toys and serving ware, to flexible and rigid packaging—replacing petrochemical-derived materials with corn and other domestic renewable plant sources will have a huge impact on our nation’s dependency on foreign oil, not to mention greatly reducing pollution and greenhouse gases. We can do this. Bioplastics, basically corn-derived plastics, are already being used by companies like Walmart, which recently saved 800,000 gallons of gasoline and reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 11 million pounds by converting to corn-based packaging, and Cargill’s NatureWorks, maker of Ingeo, the registered brand name of “the first man-made fiber made from 100 percent annually renewable resources.” Thanks to bioplastics manufacturers like Cargill and NatureWorks leading the way, growing numbers of large and small companies— Newman’s Own, Oakland Coliseum, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Belgium’s Alken-Maes Breweries, French hypermarket chain Auchan, Biota Brands of America, Naturally Iowa Dairy, Coop Italy, Seattle-based Pacific Coast Feather Co.—across the country, and throughout the world—are choosing bioplastics for items ranging from cups, service ware and water bottles to milk cartons and mattress toppers, shifting our petrochemical oil-based economy to renewables and loosening America’s ties to unfriendly, oil-supplying enemy governments.

So how do you get plastic from corn? The almost completely nontoxic process uses ancient natural methods such as bacterial fermentation rather than chemical catalysts. Following fermentation steps similar to the human digestive tract’s, corn is converted first to complex starches and then to simpler sugars such as dextrose; dextrose can be coaxed into milk sugar polymers or polylactides and then into various chemically controlled and fermented patented resins, films and filaments. When the product’s useful life has come to an end, it can be industrially composted and used to enrich the soil, instead of sending toxic molecules into underground aquifers. This is full cycle green chemistry at its best.

Free from mutagens, carcinogens and neurotoxins, and causing no long-term health risks to workers, the manufacturing of corn-based products is a healthy alternative to making petrochemical-based items from polyvinyl chloride, styrene, polyethylene, acrylics, elastomers and phthalates, whose toxic molecules— butadiene, styrene, phthalates and PVC—often end up in the tissues of workers and consumers and in our air, lakes, streams, underground aquifers and aquatic life.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon or even environmental extremist to make the connection and see that these same toxic chemicals are part and parcel of our addiction as well. When we buy plastic products, we end up perpetuating the addiction. But, until recently, none of us have had all that many choices. Our products are almost all packaged in, or made from, plastic. We have so many plastic molecules in our tissues by now, there might be some truth to the phrase that someone is plastic; heck, we are, more and more, made from plastic molecules, too. We have had no choice but to be toxic.

Now, though, we have a choice. NatureWorks’s goal is to defy the common belief that we cannot produce goods without toxic molecules—that toxicity and conversion of raw materials to finished products must result in pollution. We’re taking steps in the right direction.

The benefits to each of us for being less toxic are enormous. Weighing the difference between oil and corn-based materials for 1,000 plastic bottles, in terms of greenhouse gases, the corn plant produces only 62 kilograms, while the petroleum plastics plant yielded 111 kilograms, according to a report in the March 28, 2005, issue of Forbes magazine. Costs are lower for corn, too. While the cost of oil has risen, the cost of corn-based raw materials has fallen since 1975, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Converting to corn may just be the way America breaks its oil addiction, saving itself with its own home-grown resources.

You can see potential global and positive change in America emanating from the Corn Belt. Look for bioplastics. They’re here now.