survey conducted in early April on behalf of joint venture partners Metabolix, Inc. and Archer Daniels Midland found that 72 percent of the U.S. public does not know that conventional plastic derives from petroleum products. Forty percent of the 501 respondents thought plastic naturally biodegrades.
   U.S. plastics manufacturing, in fact, consumes approximately 2 million barrels of oil a day – or 10 percent of the nation's overall consumption – and its products never go away.
   That's one reason why the two companies' joint venture, Telles, and other ventures worldwide are seeking to substitute plant- based materials for oil in the making of their materials.
   In December 2006, Telles received permits for a commercial manufacturing facility for the making of biodegradable plastic, called Mirel. The plant is now under construction adjacent to an ADM corn wet mill complex in Clinton, Iowa. Using starch from the corn grind, the process uses a natural fermentation process that converts sugars into plastics. Commercial production is expected to commence in 2008. The facility will have an annual production capacity of 110 million pounds – just a blip in an annual industry capacity of 350 billion pounds, but a start.
   The process naturally dovetails with that of ethanol production. In fact, Cambridge- based Metabolix is looking at switchgrass and sugarcane as possible sources of natural plastics, including a project in Australia, at the same time that cellulosic ethanol pilot projects using those two sources are just getting off the ground. (One sugarcane- based ethanol project, from fellow Cambridge company Celunol, is profiled in the Louisiana Spotlight.)
   In reporting the company's financial results this spring, Metabolix officials said 50 customer prospects are evaluating more than 70 different product applications for Mirel, with 25 in various stages of prototype product testing and qualification.
   Brian Ruby, spokesman for Metabolix, makes clear that the entire facility in Clinton will run on biomass, using no petroleum. He says the company's upcoming cellulosic platforms are unique because they involve actually growing the natural plastics, known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), inside switchgrass and sugarcane plants, extracting them, and using the leftover biomass for ethanol production.
   In recognizing the innovative work of Metabolix with a "Green Chemistry" award several years ago, the U.S. EPA noted its economic potential:
   "Producing 50 billion pounds of PHA natural plastics to replace about half of the petrochemical plastics currently used in the United States would reduce oil imports by over 200- 230 million barrels per year, improving the U.S. trade balance by $6 to 9 billion per year, assuming oil at $30- 40 per barrel," said the agency.
   With oil prices now rising to double that price range, the economics of natural plastics continue to improve.
   The public relations value of products derived from bio- based processes is also rising. In Ohio, the longstanding king of plastics production and expertise, agriculture is the number two industry in the state after polymers, say officials at Polymer Ohio. And with companies like Wal- Mart and governments grading suppliers on their "greenness," the biopolymer work being pursued by companies and by institutions like the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center at Ohio State University takes on more significance with each passing day.
   Some of that work is emerging from the school's Ohio Bioproducts Innovation Center, established in 2005 with the help of an $11.5- million grant under the state's Third Frontier economic development program. EarthFirst PLA film, one of the showcased products in the center's Renewable Packaging Initiative, is made using NatureWorks PLA by Columbus- based Plastic Suppliers Inc. at its PolyFlex manufacturing operation.
   NatureWorks PLA, a corn- based polymer developed by Cargill and Dow (and now produced solely by Cargill after Dow's pullout in 2005) is for use in both clothing and plastics packaging. The Cargill complex in Blair, Neb., is now the world's biggest producer of renewable plastics. James Stoppert, senior director of Cargill's Industrial Bio- Products division, told The Wall Street Journal in April that he could envision 20 PLA bio- refineries springing up across the U.S. Midwest.    In the potato fields of northern Maine, leftover and custom- grown biomass may be just the ticket to another new plastics application.
   According to a study published in June by the Department of Plant, Soil and Environmental Sciences within the Department of Resource Economics and Policy at the University of Maine's Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, there is plenty of potato- growing capacity to accommodate the production of polylactic acid (PLA), a biobased plastics feedstock, at a facility that would support InterfaceFABRIC's manufacturing requirements for use in their bio- based fabrics for commercial interiors.
   InterfaceFABRIC, a division of the Atlanta- based textile manufacturer Interface that is based in Guilford, Maine, already operates three plants that used recycled plastics and corn- based PLA shipped from the Midwest as feedstock. The company in March won a "New Technologies in Renewables" award from The Society of Plastics Engineers for its work demonstrating that its Terratex fabrics could be successfully composted.
   Citing processing and prices that would be comparable to a corn- based PLA scenario, the study, authored by Kate Dickerson and Jonathan Rubin, concludes that "the amount of PLA needed by InterfaceFABRIC (13 million pounds per year) could, in principle, be supplied solely by waste potatoes, made up of those left in fields after harvesting, those not marketed or below grade, and potato waste from processing. However, the resources or economies to collect those wastes and waste potatoes and provide them to a PLA facility are not available at this time."
   The authors cite a study for small- scale production of corn- based PLA at a pilot facility in Germany that translated to an annual plant operating cost of $26.6 million a year.
   Maine potato growers would see a return similar to what they see for foodstock potatoes, and may even increase their profit if the promise of a particular species called the Defender plays out. Thanks to ample available acreage on which to expand plantings (after a significant downturn in foodstock acreage over the past decade), there would be no impact on the food supply chain. At its peak in the mid- 1940s, Maine harvested as much as 220,000 acres (89,034 hectares) of potatoes, dropping by 36 percent by the mid- 1950s. The average acreage since 1993 has been 67,000 acres (27,115 hectares).
   "Expanding the harvested area by another 6,667 acres [2,698 hectares] of potatoes, providing the equivalent of another 20,000 acres [8,094 hectares) based upon a three- year rotation of potato crops, to address the need for new potato sources for potato starch for PLA is something that potato growers could accomplish in one planting season," stated the report. But it ends by asking the salient question: "Where would be the best location for a PLA facility, in terms of transportation, energy and storage costs?"
   In a published interview in June, Wendy Porter, InterfaceFABRIC's director of environmental management, said such a plant would likely be located somewhere near potato fields in the state's vast Aroostook County, and cost approximately $50 million. Helping the business case is the presence in the region of environmentally conscious end users interested in using bioplastics in their products and packaging, including Tom's of Maine.
   Reached by phone, Mark LaCroix, vice president of global sustainability for InterfaceFABRIC, says he and his colleagues are meeting to "get after next steps," and says the project "has some legs."
   In a separate interview, Bill Foley, director of new business development for InterfaceFABRIC, says, "Bio- based plastics are something we're going to see more and more of in our market, and across the whole manufacturing sector."
   Foley says the Maine research data and potential applications look promising, though the concept is in its very early stages. He says the idea of being able to take a product like the Maine Defender potato and make a bioplastic out of it is the kind of thing Interface can relate to, not least because of the low fertilizer and insecticide quotient involved with the species. That's part of the "life cycle thinking" that has been identified so strongly with Interface and its founder Ray Anderson. Foley also says the process would build off the learning path established by the company's experience establishing PLA production.
   "If the Defender potato can be brought back as a useful material to make bioplastics, it has the type of footprint we've been looking for," he says, adding that the industry needs to diversify from corn. "Life cycle analysis is one of the gates we're going to go through. Intuitively, I like it, but I want to see where the numbers land."    The chemical building blocks for plastics production are just as open for bio- based innovation as the materials they compose.
   In late November 2006, the $100- million biopolymer plant established in Loudon, Tenn., by joint venture DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products, LLC, sent its first commercial shipments. The plant makes Bio- PDO (or 1,3- propanediol), an ingredient in specialty polymers like Sorona, as well as cosmetics, liquid detergents and antifreeze, and a natural replacement for petroleum- based glycol.
   The production of Bio- PDO consumes 40 percent less energy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent versus petroleum- based propanediol.
   Some of the shipments are headed to DuPont's own factory in Kinston, N.C., for the manufacture of its Sorona polymer, which can be shaped into use for such end products as carpet (Mohawk Industries is already using it), clothing, packaging, automotive and home furnishings and engineering thermoplastic resins.
   DuPont followed up in June with the launch of another product line, Cerenol, made from 100- percent renewable resources. It is manufactured by polymerizing Bio- PDO with itself. DuPont followed that launch with the debut of an information portal on renewably sourced materials, which it defines as those that are at least 20- percent renewably sourced ingredients by weight.
   Cargill, too, is getting into the glycol replacement business. In May, the company announced a joint venture with Kentucky- based Ashland Inc. solely to make bio- based chemicals. Its first product will be propylene glycol made in part from glycerin, a co- product of biodiesel production. According to the JV's news release, "the joint venture expects to provide global manufacturing and marketing of bio- based PG, starting with a 65,000 metric ton- per- year plant at a yet- to- be- finalized location in Europe." The JV plans to invest between $80 million and $100 million initially.
   A November 2006 survey of the 65 members of the European Bioplastics Association found that they expected biodegradable resin production to triple between 2005 and 2010, with the proportion of those resin types sourced from renewable resources growing right along with it. Among the biorefineries recently established in Europe is the new one in Terni, Italy, near Spoleto to the north of Rome, from Novamont and the Coldiretti regional agricultural cooperative. The plant backs up Novamont's investment of approximately $133 million in bioplastic research and facilities (including a new headquarters in Novara, outside Torino, opened last fall) with investment in those products' chemical intermediate supply chain.
   Once fully operational in 2008, the plant will have a capacity of 60,000 tons of bioplastics. Novamont, a 120- person company, sees itself in second place behind Cargill by 2008 in terms of global manufacturing capacity of biodegradable plastics. And it sees its project as a new industrial model, a way to deal with some of the strictures inherent in the European Union's "set- asides" and other global economic developments.
   "In Italy, more than 800,000 hectares [1.98 million acres] of agricultural land are left uncultivated (set aside) due to EU decisions," read a company release in October 2006. "The European Union gives some contributions to farmers for this purpose: Thanks to the Novamont biorefinery system, theoretically, it is possible to produce approximately 2 million tons of bioplastics, by re- converting these hectares of land into maize and oleaginous plants cultures. This amount is equal to a quarter of the entire national demand of plastics, half of the entire quantity of the disposable products. This project is, therefore, perfectly compatible with other kinds of cultures and may start an entire economic industrial chain, according to a systematic environmental competitiveness."
   "Our biorefinery is one of the first real examples of a new model that creates an integrated system among industry, agriculture, environment and local economy," said Catia Bastioli, managing director of Novamont S.p.A., extolling the company's focus on what it calls "life cycle thinking." "Now it is the time to understand whether the institutions and the industrial world are ready to adopt the environmental standards that comply with this development typology, enhancing the territory at the same time."