Bioplastics will bring about a sustainable future

After much hardship, Mark Herrema and his company Newlight have finally been able to produce pellets of plastic called Air Carbon from methane gas, which is a common by-product on farms. In 2012, an estimated 288 million metric tons of plastic was produced in comparison to the 99 million metric tons produced in the year 1989. With the reduction in fossil fuel resources, a lot people are looking into producing plastics out of renewable sources.

Conventional plastics take a lot of time to decompose and when discarded, they tend to cause a lot of harm to the environment. Newlight has created a material that has the potential to be used in automobile parts, packaging, electronics etc. It is supposed to be used later this year to produce mobile cases for Virgin Mobile and plastic chairs for KI furniture.

Methane is 21 times more harmful to the atmosphere than CO₂ and when it is used to make plastic which is long lasting it is benefitting the environment even more as there is no methane released in the atmosphere. However, methane is not the only compound which can be used to create plastics. In Nebraska, NatureWorks is using the sugar from corn to produce Ingeo through fermentation.

Methane is still a better compound for the manufacture of plastic as the production process is more environmentally beneficial and there is no food-fuel debate around it.

Coca Cola is one of the biggest consumers of conventional plastic and has asked 3 firms to try and produce completely renewable plastic. One of these firms is Englewood based Gevo. In 2010, a Brazilian petrochemical company called Braskem started using sugar cane to derive ethanol and use it to produce polyethylene which is the most frequently used plastic. Now, this company makes Pantene Nature Fusion shampoo bottles, Odwalla juice bottles and hard hats (safety equipment).

Source: http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059993608