Corn-Based Plastic

SolemnDragon writes "CNN.com is offering up an article about the new corn-based plastic-like product being used at Wild Oats Natural Markets. The product looks like plastic, works like plastic... and then turns into compost. Dubbed the 'corn-tainer,' it's being used to serve foods, etc. Available only in the Pacific Northwest stores (of course) or you can make your own at home. And here's more info on Bio-plastic from MSU." Our older story.

Comments

I thought of a joke

[Exiler]

but it was corny, so nevermind

How long till it decays

[mpost4]

will it be usefull for storing things for long periods of time, say you wish to store something in a bag (non-food) and leave it for years (lets say like pictures) will the bag decay on you? Will I need to use classic plastic to store non-food stuff?

Re:How long till it decays

[mpost4]

I think they should look to get a plastic replacement that takes about 10 years before it decays, or some formula that will not decay till a special chemical is applied (but this one in my mind seams to be undesirable, because this just adds more chemicals to the environment, and if some slips by we still have the long lasting object)

Re:How long till it decays

[HaloZero]

What if such chemical were.. say.. methane? Naturally occuring, and is already ever-present in landfills.

Re:How long till it decays

[Anonymous Coward]

The short answer to your question is... it depends.

Depending on the final processing of the PLA pellets, the time frame/conditions necessary for decomposition can vary greatly (e.g. amorphous vs. crystallized pellets, additives used). It's my understanding that PLA can even be formulated to last as long as "traditional" plastics.

I was involved with the engineering and startup of the Cargill Dow PLA facility in Blair in 2001-2002. I had several opportunities to talk personally with some of the research chemists who developed the product formulations and perfected the manufacturing process.

Did someone say...

[Anonymous Coward]

cr0n?

Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp

[Nom du Keyboard]

This is one of those genuinely good things to happen, if it plays out as good as it sounds now. Nice to see good news at the end of the week.

I wish we were as forward looking on legal products from hemp, which I would also consider a good thing.

(Not a troll promoting or encouraging illegal drug use.)

Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp

[billstewart]

The best legal uses for hemp included smoking the flowers - that requires fixing the laws to match the US Constitution, rather than doing anything technical with the hemp :-) After all, the original copies of the Constitution seem to have stuck around long after anybody in government bothered to read the words on them. Other useful things to do are making hemp cloth, paper, rope, edible seeds, etc. However, I've found that hemp papers sometimes curl a bit too much in laser printers to work very well (or at least, they're not very useful for printing double-sided, because they don't flatten out as well for printing the back side.)

However, using hemp rolling papers won't affect the THC content of your smoke, because it's got pretty close to none in it. The paper is made from those stems you didn't need, and it's made from hemp plants that were bred for big fibrous stems, not big tasty buds or leaves. As the label for one brand of hemp-based clothing says "Sorry, but you can't smoke your shirt."

It's possible that using hemp rolling papers will make the contents burn faster or slower or hotter or less hot than dead-tree papers, but you really ought to be smoking from a bong or some other device that'll cool the smoke and reduce lung irritation. However, selling devices that improve public health by reducing the harm caused by illegal substances is illegal in many states, so you're not allowed to print out this message on hemp-based paper with soy-based ink to roll joints in.

Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually would be quite useful in a number of situations.

For paper let's consider the fact that not all paper is of the same grade. There is packaging paper products, crappy paper drink containers at movie places, writing paper, and toilet paper. I personally wouldn't want to be wiping with hemp paper as it's a bit rough, but for packaging paper and shaped paper drink holders it'd work great.

Some of the really great things about hemp is it doesn't leach minerals out of the ground at anywhere near the same rate cotton does, nor does it take anywhere near as long to grow as a tree. In fact, I may have heard it is the single fastest growing biomass plant in the world, though you may want to check me on that.

The thing about it's biomass is that it can be turned into biofuel. Not totally sure how, but I know the idea behind it is sound.

It's interesting to take a look at the prohibiton of hemp, which occured simultaneously with the prohibition on cannabis, and look at some of the people who contributed to it being made illegal. I don't recall all but I know Dow, some national wood producer, and some oil companies were involved. I think it's all detailed in the book "The Emperor Wears no Clothes" by Jack Hanna or something like that.

My favorite website for news on prohibition, general civil liberties abuse, and marijuana is www.marijuana.com

Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp

[ruprechtjones]

Most pro-hemp kids I run into don't understand the difference between legalizing hemp and legalizing THC-marijuana. I'm all for legalizing (and regulating and taxing) both, but I think that hemp has the greater value. If done right, growing copious crops of non-THC hemp could reduce our nasty habit of deforestation (to an extent) and really help out companies like Weyerhaeuser. It's not the end-all-be-all solution to cutting down trees, but it's a good start.

The paper industries would benefit from the legalization of hemp, while the IRS would benefit from the legalization of marijuana. But it ain't ever gonna happen in our lifetimes.

Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp

[zogger]

Huge yields per acre without having to use massive amounts of fertiliser. Food, fuel, fabric,other fiber products,and plastics. Large variety of useful products from the same plant. Requires very little care. When I was a kid, there were still a lot of wild patches left over from world war 2, when they did an emergency "grow this stuff now" campaign after the phillipines fell to the japanese. No one thought about smoking it though, but I remember playing in one patch that was several acres, stuff was like 15 feet high or something, big plants.

Farmers could even afford to only harvest half the plant, plow the remainder back under, thereby making your soil every year better, not more depleted, by adding more carbon back into the surface layer.

It scares the monopolists. Places where it's legal have zero problems with it, none.

Nope, government is a 100% complete %^&*&**( about it, too much money to be made keeping it illegal and keeping the drug war hype going, shoot, that was the really big police state push, they got everyone to accept all this gestapo SWAT team crap and whatnot with that artifical "threat". I mean, c'mon now, pothead terrorists? People who sit around and eat and listen to records? (well, that's what I saw in the olden days, maybe it's different now) And all the useful stuff you can get from it besides psychoactive? It's a joke, government is out to lunch on it, but, they dig those billions they make on the side and they get to build prisons and have new agencies and use up all that po-leece equipment they have kicking around the po-leece station.....

My take is, God got all these things, they all got a use, we get to use them, use the planet, plus we are supposed to be neat, sorta take care of things too, there's our ecological balance idea. Makes sense to me.. We may not know WHAT some things are useful for yet-like chiggers, wazzup with them things?- but, everything is useful, and no government should say "no you don't", that's just bogus.

Re:Sounds Fantastic -- Now Why Not Hemp

[Impotent_Emperor]

The thing is, just cutting down trees doesn't lead to deforestation. Usually, it takes either agriculture and urbanization in order to get rid of forestland. Forests have a tendency to grow back when humans stop plowing into the soil or constantly managing their lawns.

Using hemp would be nice, but there are some problems. First of all, you need someplace to grow it. With genetically modified crops, we can grow more food per acre, and thus free up farmland to grow hemp. However, there is currently controversy over GM foods, so I don't know if we can definitely count on that happening. The alternative is to cut down forests in order to make way for hemp-farms. This is counter-productive to the goal of saving forests.

On top of that, hemp is not nearly as useful as trees (note: this is a general statement, some trees are probably better for certain uses than other trees). Hemp has usually been used to make rope and sacks. However, wood from trees goes into building homes, furniture, and other structures along with the pulp we use for paper products (a lot of the the wood the makes paper is actually waste from mills that produce building materials) and is a cheap fuel source for developing/poor people.

Hemp would compete with other crops for manpower and machinery because it is a seasonal crop. Harvested hemp would have to stored under weatherproof conditions while trees usually can be left outside with the elements. Hemp doesn't work with existing mills, so new, specialty mills would have to be constructed. Basically, we would need an infrastracture change in order to accommodate large-volume hemp production.

Recently, I became a proponent of sustainable forestry (this is also where I got all that hemp vs. trees info). If people want to save forests, replacing what forests produce with other materials isn't the way to do it. If a tree has no value (can't turn it anything that can be sold), then trees will be cut down and replaced with something that will make money. If you want trees (and forests) to exist, then there has to be a demand for them. This seems like simple economics (glad I took that class) and seems logically correct (glad I took a Practical Reasoning class, too).

As long as care is taken to make sure a forest is replanted after logging, forestlands can be sustained.

Corn

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally! I'm rich! I have never owned a computer, tech stocks, etc... but I have been farming corn for the past 50 years! Finally!

Getting too much pr0n?

Obligatory Comments

[Eberlin]

That's a-maize-ing!
That's one way to compile your kernel.
Hey, guess what I managed to cobb-le together.
Make plastic or make tequila...tough choice.
Lastly, I am Cornholio...do you have TP for my bunghole?

Economics

[meta-monkey]

Bio degradable better for the environment blah blah blah.

Nobody's going to use it except in a few niche markets unless it's cheaper to mass-produce than good ol' synthetic plastic. That will take a long time to achieve.

Actually, even if it did replace plastic, I'm not sure it would be better for the environment. Now you need to mass-mass produce corn. Agricultural run-off can be pretty destructive, too, not to mention the effects of irrigation on natural waterways. TANSTAAFL.

Re:Economics

[Dolohov]

Like the title of your post says, it's economics, and to a greater extent, politics. Forget the environmental argument, compelling as it may be to some people. I'm more interested in reducing the country's consumption of petroleum for both economic reasons (It's largely an import-only product at this point) and political reasons (We tend to import it from people who don't particularly like us).

Those two considerations alone are, I think, enough to provoke a restructuring of our farm subsidies to make these plastics considerably cheaper in a very short period of time.

Corn-based plastic.

[Crusty Oldman]

.
They coat it with sugar, stamp it into interesting shapes, and call it "breakfast cereal".

Re:Nice

[brunes69]

Since glass is just melted sand, couldnt glass just be ground up into fine sand?

Cargill and Dow

[Kagato]

Cargill and Dow have had a comercial Corn based platic for years. It enviromentally safe, degrades when when Heat, Mosture, and Darkness are applied. However, because of the way our Ag system works, petro based platic is still cheaper.

Disney uses this...

[JTFritz]

Disney uses a product like this at all of their theme parks. When you get "plastic" utensils at a restaraunt in the park, it's actually this stuff.

Great for the environment considering how much garbage Disney generates.

Feel free to interpret that last statement any way you wish :)

Foretold in "Cradle to Cradle"

[iiii]

This kind of thing was described/foretold/requested in the book "Cradle to Cradle" , by William McDonough & Michael Braungart, which after reading the /. review I bought and read. (BTW, here is their company) An interesting read. Lots of propaganda, but lots of really good ideas, and a few real results, too. Other related links here and here.

yes

[SHEENmaster]

but Classic Plastic will be outlawed due to its effect on the environment. It will then be discovered that it can act as a halucinegen. America will declare war on plastics, and the libertarian party will be ignored for standing up for our right to buy and use plastics.

Re:Nice

[Smidge204]

Glass is easily recyclable though. You can crush it up into course particals and use it as aggregate in concrete and asphalt paving, or just melt it down and make new things out of it.

Plastic is a bit trickier, mainly because there's so many different types of plastic, it makes sorting a nightmare. Some products even use 2 or 3 different types of plastic in one unit! (eg: Tic-Tac dispenser uses a polystyrene container and a polypropylene lid)

different "types" of glass are mostly just heat treatments. eg: tempered/safety glass.

A plastic that dissolves in a special chemical would make it easier, especially if that chemical could be retreived after use. Dump all the plastic garbage in a big pot, add chemical, dissolve type X plastic, drain chemical and recover, add different chemical to dissolve type Y plastic, repeat...

I've also seen plastics (especially expanded polystyrene, like coffee cups) that have glucose in their polymer chains, which means bacteria aide in decomposing the material while it's in the landfill. No idea what happened to this stuff though...
=Smidge=

biodegradable containers have been around for a

[Bob Bitchen]

couple of years now Earthshell has been making biodegradable containers for a while, McDonalds already uses them. And so does the National Park Service.

Re:biodegradable containers have been around for a

[Ratface]

yup - here in Europe I'll be travelling to a huge rock festival in Denmark in a week or so where all the disposable cutlery for food is made from this stuff (or at least something similar). Works pretty well for the disposable market.

Plastic Pollution

[tbmaddux]

In case you're wondering why plastic is bad, visit the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. They have done cruises into the Pacific Ocean and found tiny pieces of plastic that outnumber zooplankton 6 to 1. Plastic "nurdles" or little unprocessed beads of plastic are the number 1 beach polluter in southern California. They sorb hydrophobic toxins (DDT, PCBs and the like) and then poison the critters that eat them.

Sounds familiar

[Bobartig]

We had something like this at my college. It was a grain based plastic-like material for disposable flatware (forks, spoons, knives). The material was billed as a replacement to plastic utensils and would fully biodegrade in landfills within 30-45 days. The material was also very bitter, overly flexy/soft, and became limp when heated to the temperature of hot food. Hopefully, this material is entirely different

Re:Nice

[dhovis]

Disclamer: IAAMS (I Am A Materials Scientist)

Pretty much, yes. Except that I think sand is crystalline and they add some stuff (soda, lime, etc) to make it melt easier. Anything ceramic (and that includes glass), is basically a synthetic rock. Why would you want it to degrade? What is glass poisoning? Anyway, glass is recycled a lot easier than plastic, and recycling is preferable to decay. Just sort it by color and melt it down.

Actually I think aluminum takes longer to decay than glass does because aluminum forms a protective oxide on the surface that is not as water sensitive as silica (glass) is. Even so, aluminum is great because it is actually profitable to recycle aluminum since it costs a lot less to melt down old aluminum than it does to refine new aluminum from bauxite.

The other point is that neither aluminum nor glass produces anything toxic as they degrade. Many plastics release nasty toxic compounds as they degrade and so you don't really want them to break down.

I know my popcorn well enough...

[cybermace5]

...to know that michael meant to say "from the orville-redenbacher dept."

Corn keeps coming up in the news, with more and more uses. There is a corn-based fuel that's gaining popularity in Minnesota, especially among street rodders. Apparently it has a little more zip than gasoline, and hey, renewable energy (plus the by-products are still useful as animal feed). Corn is the most cost-effective solar cell we'll ever have.

But you know, in a hundred years, when our great-grandkids all drive corn-powered cars and use corn-plastic products, the alternative-energy quacks will just whine about Big Corn keeping them down.

Re:Yeah, what about ethanol?

[benjamindees]

What bullshit. No one is planning to distill ethanol with 'gasoline'. We can use our copious amounts of natural gas and coal, hell, even nuclear energy to create enough ethanol to last for centuries. The article you cite only reaches such absurd conclusions because it includes solar energy as an input.

In actual 'energy' usage, ethanol does require more energy to create than it offers. A lot of that energy comes from the sun, though, instead of from limited resources. Think of it as a way to convert sunlight and any random heat source around 200Â F into automotive fuel. In that regard, I'm pretty sure it's even more efficient to produce than hydrogen that is electrically 'cracked'.

Another benefit of ethanol is that it is a clean, safe liquid fuel that is completely compatible with existing combustion engines.

Greenhouse gas sinks

[TheSync]

The most interesting environmental question is whether carbohydrate-based plastics are a net greenhouse gas sink. Oil-based plastics pull carbon out of the ground, and put it back into landfills.

Carbohydrate-based plastics actually pull CO2 out of the air as plants grown (good), but if they do decompose, the carbon is released as methane gas, which is actually a more powerful greenhouse warming gas than CO2 (bad).

In the future, we may move from plants to GM bacteria that have hyper-efficient photosynthesis / chemosythesis and cellulases for materials prodcution.