Bioplastics Poised to Grow

Bioplastics derived from plant oils will grab a bigger share of the plastics market because of concerns about the environment and dependence on foreign oil. Analysts project about 50 billion pounds of demand in about two to five years.

Bioplastics already are found in products including plastic gift cards, food containers, cell phones, and computer casings. The basic ingredient of corn-based products is polylactide, referred to as PLA.

Most PLA has to go a commercial composting operation to be composted, according to Betty McLaughlin, executive director of the nonprofit Container Recycling Institute.

Other bioplastics come from plant sources such as hemp and soy bean oil. They became popular about 15 years ago as a solution to solid waste problems.

Amid growing concern about global warming and higher oil prices, bioplastics offer alternatives because they produce much lower amounts of carbon dioxide when they decompose compared to oil-based polymers.

Benefits Abound

Brand new versions of plastics are hybrids of oil- and plant-based feedstocks to preserve the property benefits of existing polymers like nylon. In some cases, there are improvements in some of the specifications, like surface gloss and impact resistance.

Some bioplastics are made directly from starch and are used for applications such as drug capsules. Another, polylactic acid, comes from polymerized lactic acid produced by fermenting starch contained in sweet corn and other plants.

PLA is already used in packaging and medical implants. A third bioplastic called poly 3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) has properties comparable to polypropylene. A booming demand is triggering expanded capacity of both feedstocks and polymer.

For instance, sugar producers in South America, primary suppliers of ethanol, announced large capacity increases.

WMB agrees with analysts who forecast PHB could drop below 60 cents per pound, opening up new opportunities for bioplastics.

Greening of Japan

One of the most exciting developments is in Japan, where three new laws are fueling development. These include the Law on Promoting Green Purchasing, the Law for the Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources, and the Pollutant Release and Transfer Register Law.

One of the leading players is Fujitsu which uses a PLA hybrid developed by Toray Industries to make the housing for its notebook PC series. The Toray material is called Ecodear and is aimed at fibers, textiles, molded parts, and films.
Toray recently invested in a $9 million plant in South Korea, with a packaging converter Saehan, a 10 percent investor. Their goal is to increase recycling and to avoid landfills.

Fujitsu also is working with a French chemical producer, Arkema, to produce a bioplastic based on castor oil with increased flexibility compared with corn-based plastic.

Arkema’s new Rislan PA 11 is now approved in fuel lines that carry biofuels in Europe and Brazil. This material cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 42 percent, according to Thomas Grimaud, Arkema’s business manager.

NEC Corp. is using PLA-based plastic reinforced with kenaf fibers to mold the entire case of a mobile phone for DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile phone company. The kenaf fiber provides significant strength to the bioplastic material. Sony also is involved in bioplastics.

Hiroyuki Mori, a senior eco-material engineer, says Sony is using several small components based on PLA. Sony’s research indicates PLA-based polymers can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent and nonrenewable resource by 55 percent.

Closer To Home

DuPont is currently taking the lead in developing biopolymers in the United States. Target markets are automobiles, appliances, and connectors.

In another development, Proctor & Gamble and Kaneka are working on a joint-venture to commercialize a polymer called Nodax H.

Metabolix of Cambridge, MA, is partnering with Archer Daniels Midland to build a plant in Clinton, Iowa, to produce 110 million pounds of plastic based on PHA. The Metabolix plastics are produced from genetically engineered microbes. Most of the technology is owned by MIT.

Novomer of Ithaca, N.Y., is working with Kodak to develop commercial plastics based on technology from Cornell. Target markets are medical implants, and construction of flexible screens for electronic applications.

As bioplastics evolve and applications increase, it should be interesting to see what breakthroughs take shape. Global research and development is the key for this industry, which offers unlimited potential.

TechMan

Editor's Note: Because of a software glitch, an early unedited version of this post may have appeared briefly over last weekend. We apologize for the inconvenience.

New From WMB: ChinaWatch

To our readers: We’ve noticed posts involving China draw higher viewer interest. In response, WMB will provide a weekly digest of business and consumer-related news, ChinaWatch, culled from reliable websites. As always, please share the post and comment if you like. Enjoy – Ken.

Food Prices Jump

Annual food price inflation hit 10.1 per cent in October compared with a year earlier - a level not seen in China since mid-2007 - deepening concerns that the economy is now starting to overheat after two years of stimulus.

Many ordinary people feel the official inflation figures underestimate the true rises.

''Ten per cent? That's a joke,'' says Li Mingwei, a shopkeeper at Beijing's largest wholesale food market. ''The price of leeks has doubled from last year; cooking oil is up by 25 per cent since the summer and rice by even more. Everything is going up.''

This kind of disgruntlement makes China's leaders very nervous. In the past, inflation has been a catalyst for social unrest, including in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and it remains a sensitive political pressure point.

Investing In Green

China invested 200 billion yuan ($30.12 billion) to boost energy conservation and curb greenhouse gas emissions in the past five years, according to the Xinhua news agency.

He Bingguang - a senior official of the department of resource conservation and environmental protection at the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's central planning agency - made the statement to reporters in Beijing at a clean-technology conference.

The announcement comes two weeks before Chinese officials head to Cancun, Mexico, for climate pact talks, which aim to fix a new framework for tackling global warming.

China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, has made a domestic vow to reduce "carbon intensity," the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of economic growth, by 40-45 percent by 2020 compared to 2005.

GM Venture Debuts

General Motors Corp.'s commercial micro-van joint venture in China started producing its first Baojun brand passenger vehicle at a plant in southern China, the U.S. auto maker says.

The Baojun 630 sedan, which is the first model to be produced under the soon-to-be-launched Baojun brand name, rolled off the production line in Guangxi province's Liuzhou city on Monday, GM says in a statement.

The four-door sedan is the first of a series of passenger cars the joint venture, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., expects to launch over the next few years under the Baojun brand name. GM says the Baojun 630 will go on sale in early 2011 through a new network of dedicated Baojun dealers.

The new brand was created to address growing demand for affordable passenger cars in China and is aimed at competing with the country's home-grown auto brands including Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. and BYD Co., GM says.

Global Warming Burns Us

Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue confronting world leaders, according to The New York Times. It may be this problem, not GDP to debt ratios, health care, or even terrorism that more determines our viability as a future global leader.

On the one hand, warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to the rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human generated carbon emissions produced mainly from burning fossil fuels and deforestation.

On the other hand, the technological, economic and political issues that need to be resolved before a concerted worldwide effort to reduce emissions can even begin are not getting easier. This is even more so in the face of global recession.

World leaders convened in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009 with global warming on the agenda.


But that session, in the works for years, fell short with even lower expectations – the 192 nations represented merely agreed to try to reach a binding accord at a follow-up meeting in Cancun, Mexico, slated for December 2010.

But by summer 2010, Ban-Ki Moon, the United Nations Secretary General, stated no sweeping accord was likely and recommended a better solution might consist of small steps in separate fields that build toward a wider consensus.

At the heart of the international debate is a huge conflict between rich and poor countries over who steps up first and pays the most for planned energy changes to address global warming and climates changes.

In the United States, Democratic leaders in the Senate in July gave up on even reaching agreement on a scaled-down climate bill. Opposition came from Republicans and some energy-state Democrats. The House of Representatives, shifting from Democratic to GOP control in January 2011 as a result of this month’s elections, passed a broad cap-and-trade bill in 2009.

Meanwhile, recent increases and fluctuations in temperature have intensified public debate over how quickly and urgently to respond to global warming. Still, intense weather patterns appeared to be on the rise this year.

Arguable evidence, for example, could be seen in a string of snowstorms in the Washington state area and freezing weather in Florida last winter. Skeptics noted that weather (changing daily) and climate (the average weather for a particular region over a long time period) are not the same.

But it was the combination of flooding, heat waves and droughts during the summer months which caused researchers trained in climate analysis to see mounting evidence of weather extremes intensifying.

The long-term warming trends over the last century are well-established.


Scientists immersed in studying climate changes are projecting substantial disruption in water supplies, agriculture, ecosystems and coastal communities. Passionate activists at both ends of the debate are accelerating the discussion and decisions for rapid action.

Research polls show the public is locked into three camps. Roughly a fifth of Americans are eager for action, while a similar proportion aggressively rejects projections of catastrophe. And, unfortunately, most people have decided to tune out the issues or are confused about the implications and pending solutions.


We, at WMB, clearly support the first camp and are eager for swift action and change. We believe this huge problem possesses a reciprocating opportunity for new technology change.

Obviously, first and foremost, is to increasingly limit the use of fossil fuels in America. The United States needs to take a leadership role in this endeavor. We believe examples of technological implementation should include alternative energy sources from nuclear power plants to electric cars and new fuel cell technology.

We, at WMB, believe if action is not taken swiftly, we may surpass any opportunities for the Earth to repair itself against man’s inability to change. Obviously, some of these new technologies may cost consumers more money, but the longer we wait the higher the cost becomes, financially and environmentally.

We need to put aside political agendas and lobbyist initiatives if we are to even have a chance of saving our planet. The time for action was yesterday, so we’ve got to move forward faster now.

This post is by TechMan, WMB co-author who blogs about trends, issues and ideas affecting business, industry, technology and consumers. If you like this post, please share it.

Save Species, Save Ourselves

Unless people are willing to intercede, certain species like the polar bear in the Arctic or the grizzly bear in Yellowstone Park may become extinct – available to future generations just as exhibits in museums, or images online and in print.

Pushing animals to the brink and then trying to bring them back is not new for humans. Examples of remedies include setting aside land for special habitats or making it illegal to kill them (such as whooping cranes and eagles).

But dramatic shifts that would accompany projected climate change mean that an animal’s traditional range may no longer be habitable to it in a few years, or that a key food source or resource it needs is disappearing. New solutions to these interlinked problems are required, and the methods are different than those used in the past.

“The business-as-usual approach to managing wildlife populations and resources is no longer likely to work very well,” says John Wiens, chief conservation of science officer for the Point Reyes Bird Observatory in Petaluma, CA. “We can’t say anymore, ‘Hey, we’ll do some management to control this threat, and everything will be honky-dory’, or ‘Preserve some habitat and some organisms, and everything will be fine.’ ”

Thankfully, there are signs of positive action. After years of what many saw as foot-dragging, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is leading states and other organizations in taking the first steps toward what could become a radical departure from today’s species recovery model.

The FWS’s effort is a comprehensive and predictive “adaptation management” plan to help troubled wildlife. Its centerpiece is the creation of eight new regional landscape conservation cooperatives (LCCs); the first of up to 20 nationwide that will enlist multiple partners to deal with global warming’s forecasted effects.

Along with the U.S. Geological Survey, states, and others, the FWS is now holding regional conferences on how to design the cooperatives.

“We’re just at the very beginning stages of LCC development,” says Dan Ashe, deputy director of the FWS. “We have to be able to be more predictive; to be able to look into the future to hoe climate changes affecting species like the grizzly bear, polar bear, or coho salmon.”

The devil, of course, is in the details now for future success to be achieved.

In October 2009, Congress provided $25 million in fresh funding for the cooperatives, each of which will have a core staff of scientists to create models of probable regional climate change impacts and provide scientific analysis for future wildlife management plans.

“The LCCs are integral to climate adaption efforts,” according to an internal agency draft ‘function and form’ document. Even so, they will not be “climate-centric” but will “provide scientific support for conservation actions addressing a variety of broad-scale challenges, including water scarcity, species invasion, wildlife disease, as well as changing climate.”

Using advanced computer models, LCC scientists will report how global warming could change regional ecosystems decades from now, allowing researchers to calculate whether a recovery plan in a ‘species’ home range makes sense.

That, in turn, might make it possible to determine if a wildlife corridor, a way for animals to migrate past highways and cities to cooler northern climates, is possible. More drastic measures may be required. An example may be trans-locating a species from one location to another.

Dr. Scott Loarie’s pioneering work points to a decline of up to 59 percent in pika populations across the western United States if greenhouse gas emissions reach the higher end of the scale predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Higher levels of decline could bring calls for more radical adaptive techniques.


Options for the pika, small, rabbit-like creatures which require temperatures below 80 degrees Fahrenheit, could include spending more time underground to avoid the heat. But that may mean pikas couldn’t survive the winter, says Loarie, a researcher with the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University in California.

WMB believes that saving wildlife species threatened by climate change requires global cooperation, a complex effort that presents challenges to scientists and policymakers throughout the world.

Wildlife biologists must figure out how to model adaptive management. They must urgently ascertain vulnerability assessments and downscale climate models to local habitats, and then determine the ecological impacts of these studies.

Global warming – fact, not fiction – will continue to force scientists to figure out new solutions to an ever-increasing complex ecosystem if it is to survive mankind, the highest and most destructive form of life on the planet.

It’s a simple challenge: If we can’t save endangered species, how on Earth can we save ourselves?

This post is by TechMan, WMB co-author who blogs about trends, issues and ideas affecting business, industry, technology and consumers. If you like this post, please share it with family, friends and colleagues.