Grupo Bimbo, Mexico's largest producer of baked goods, announced this week it will be replacing its plastic packaging with a new
biodegradable plastic in all main supermarkets and retail outlets in Mexico City.
The new plastic packaging is
oxo-biodegradable and contains an additive made by the British company
Symphony Technologies. Oxo-biodegradation is a two-stage process where the breakdown and release of carbon dioxide, water and biomass is accelerated. Instead of taking years to biodegrade, the plastic breaks down within a few months
on land or in water leaving no fragments or harmful residues, according to
Symphony.
Grupo Bimbo, which produces more than 5,000 bakery products, from loaves and pastries to cookies, chocolates and sweet and salted snacks, hopes that the biodegradable plastic will help to offset its contribution to the 10 million cubic meters of
waste generated every month in Mexico. ...
Paper or plastic bags: which is better?
It's an age old question, when it comes time to check out when grocery shopping:
paper bag or plastic bag? It seems like it should be an easy choice, but there's an incredible number of details and inputs hidden in each bag. From durability and reusability to life cycle costs, there's a lot more to each bag than meet the eye. Let's take a look behind the bags.
Where do brown paper bags come from?
Paper comes from trees -- lots and lots of trees. The logging industry, influenced by companies like
Weyerhaeuser and
Kimberly-Clark, is huge, and the process to get that paper bag to the grocery store is long, sordid and exacts a heavy toll on the planet. First, the trees are found, marked and felled in a process that all too often involves
clear-cutting, resulting in massive habitat destruction and long-term ecological damage....
If there's one thing we've learned over the last few weeks, it's that burning large quantities of staple foods to produce a relatively small amount of fuel is a thoroughly misguided practice -- with grave implications for the world's most vulnerable populations. And though the barbs directed at biofuels from all sides have been merited, we must not forget one of the other main culprits in this global food crisis:
bioplastics. ...
This is some serious
Cradle to Cradle design; a chewing gum bin that collects used gums to then turn this raw material into more bins. British designer
Anna Bullus (we previously featured her
disposable sugar mug) has invented this new material she calls
Gumnetic, made from used chewing gums and bio resin. The first object created from Gumnetic is the
Bubble Gum Bin. This
sweet little object is upcycling bubble gum and turning it into a valuable raw material, potentially saving, in the UK alone, three and a half billion pieces of gum a year from going into landfill or worst, being stuck on the pavement. Nine out of ten city paving stones in Britain have had gum stuck to them, the removal of which takes expensive jet sprays or chemical treatments (Via
I&DeA). Let’s hope these attractive bins will collect the gums in the future and give them a second life. ...
Brazilian home accessories brand Coza, specialized in 'cool' plastic designs, has launched its first 100% biodegradable plastic product. The baskets from the picture belong to the
Coza Organic line and are produced with bioplastic: a commodity from potato starch which, according to the brand, decomposes completely after 18 weeks in contact with land.
The baskets come in three colors (green, blue and white) and three sizes, with or without cover. They can be found online at the
Loja Coza (retail only in Brazil, contact them for bulk requests) and in several stores around the country, including the Museum of Modern Art's design store at Rio de Janeiro (Novo Desenho). Price online starts at 15 Reais (about 8 US dollars). Read more about the company in the extended.
Via Coza Magazine...
In spite of
San Francisco's enlightening example, and
Australia and
China and other nations' plans for all-out bans on plastic bags, the world still uses a million of the suckers each minute. In Sweden 70% of surveyed consumers support a ban on plastic carrier bags, but the country's Environmental Protection Agency says no way. What's going on?
Part of the issue lies in Sweden's highly developed system of incinerating plants - keeping plastic in the waste stream ups the energy content of the stream. So while youth-oriented
PUB department store recently introduced biodegradable shopping bags and major grocery stores ICA and Konsum will also do trials, a very vocal group of researchers at Chalmers has come out strongly against bio-bags and in favor of green polypropylene instead. Find out why below the fold....
In what could be a move to get back in
Greenpeace's good graces, Nokia has unveiled its 3110 Evolve, a new phone that Nokia has "evolved" into a greener machine. With "bio-covers" (plastic?) made from more than 50% renewable material, smaller packaging made of 60% recycled content and including Nokia's most energy efficient charger yet, using 94% less energy than the Energy Star requirements.
Add that to
Nokia's energy-saving alerts, and it appears that the company is making some incremental, baby-step changes (no, not
that kind of baby step) to getting greener. With the average life span of a cell phone around
18 months (which adds up to 130 million added to the waste stream each year), it can be difficult to think of the portable talkies as "green." But since nobody is going back to the pre-cell-phone Stone Age anytime soon, let's keep those green baby steps coming.
::Nokia via
::Hippyshopper and
::Gizmodo...
Target has introduced a new version of their bioplastic gifts cards. The cards are made with a corn-based material called
Mirel from
Metabolix. This bioplastic is said to biodegrade more readily than rival materials and, unlike others, it can break down in a backyard compost bin. The
Sustainable Is Good blog has a nice photo of the cards degrading after being in a compost for 40 days. The gift cards are currently only available at 129 Target stores nationwide....
Nacre, or Mother of pearl is the iridescent lining you see on the inside of an oyster, mussel, or abalone shell. It is also the same material that creates pearls. The play of light we find so appealing is a result of the little beasties engineering the shell down to the molecular level.
To create a shell that is tough and lightweight (sometimes 3000 times tougher than its component parts), the abalone layers an organic material and a non-organic material into a nano-structure design resembling brick and mortar.
We have seen before how the abalone inspired
super tough materials. Now engineering professor Nicholas Kotov and his team from the University of Michigan have created a process similar to our bivalve friends that allows the creation of materials one nano-layer at a time, with impressive results....
While
drinking organic wines is one of TreeHugger's favorite ways to enjoy the fruits of the earth without harming the planet, wine an its derivatives are good for so much more. Here are some of our picks that go beyond simply drinking the sweet fermented grape.
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1) Wine-making, meet renewable energy production: a team of undergraduate engineering students from Oregon State University has developed an environmentally-friendly biodegradable polymer derived from biodiesel and wine-making byproducts that could replace polystyrene foam meat trays in supermarkets and be used in the manufacture of fire logs, furniture and other consumer goods.
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2) An organic winery in Western Australia recently became the recipient of a $20,555 AUD grant from that state’s Sustainable Energy Development Office, so they can build some walls from old bottles, put water in them to insulate the building, and start up a thermal imaging monitoring program for a cellar-door outlet to see how well it can keep bottles of white cool and bottles of red at a comfy room temperature.
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3) Los Angeles-based designer Cliff Spencer was intrigued by a Napa Valley winery's offer of used oak that had been soaked in wine, so he picked some up to try it out as a furniture building material. Turns out that the wine-soaked wood had a beautiful natural stain; pinot noir makes for the darkest stain while the pinot grigio leaves the lightest. The pieces resulting from the noir-stained wood has a deep walnut tones without any of the walnut finish. Clothing and pesticide made from wine, after the jump...
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Research undertaken at the
University of Bath and published in the
Journal of Industrial Ecology [2004 (7):3-4)]: considers the
life cycle of mineral and rapeseed oil in mobile hydraulic systems, i.e. a forestry harvester and a road sweeper. The general conclusion showed that the systems that used rapeseed oil were not necessarily “better” for the environment. With the exception of greenhouse gas emissions, the rapeseed oil had more negative impacts than mineral oil. The study includes the production of the machinery, the oils and their use during the lives of the machines. They attributed the poorer environmental performance of the rapeseed oil to:
“…its poor performance in the field. This is because it does not respond as well to high pressure and temperature as mineral oil, causing it to need more frequent replacement during use….Also, the rapeseed oil has more corrosive qualities than the mineral oil, and more hydraulic components need replacing during the life of a machine running on rapeseed oil than one running on mineral oil.”
...
The Japanese have often been leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of us in finding innovative ways to
reduce their energy consumption while
boosting their use of renewable energy for everyday life. Having already helped popularize the
"furoshiki" as an elegant and sustainable alternative to plastic, it comes as no surprise that they're at it again, this time developing a groundbreaking new process for recycling plastics.
A group of scientists have developed a process by which certain types of plastics can be broken down into their original chemical elements and then reused to make a new brand of high quality plastic. While most recycling methods rely on an approach that consists of melting and reforming plastic into a new, less pure type of plastic, the technique developed by Akio Kamimura and Shigehiro Yamamoto completely depolymerizes, or breaks down, the individual chains of molecules that make up
polyamide plastics....
'Carbohydrates not hydrocarbons' is the secret nature quietly whispers in our ears when we look around and find all of life uses carbohydrates, starting with plants turning sunlight into sugar.
Diversa and
Celunol have heard the whispers, and yesterday announced the completion of their merger forming the new company
Verenium. Verenium has tasked itself with bringing life's solutions to human industry. Their portfolio of enzyme, protein, and genetic sciences place this company firmly in the field of biology, while their potential products of fuels, plastics, and industrial goods points out the future of human technology - looking to nature for sustainable solutions.
Verenium’s mission is to apply these technological capabilities to achieve industrial sustainability -- meeting the common needs of modern life from carbohydrates (the energy flows that are produced and stored in living biomass) rather than hydrocarbons (fossilized energy stocks that have been stored for countless millennia in the earth’s crust). Verenium’s innovative approach promises dramatic reductions in the carbon footprint of fuels production and other common industrial processes.
...
While this breakthrough discovery may not immediately resonate with a majority of the population (
not 70% of it anyway), it has already sent the scientific world into a tizzy over its potential implications for biorefinery and our dependence on oil. As reported in this week's issue of
Science (subscription needed), a group of scientists have discovered a way to convert glucose into HFM (hydroxymethylfurfural), a chemical that is broken down into components used to manufacture products now made from oil.
Since crude oil is the base component for fuels, plastic and several industrial and household chemicals, finding a method of replacing it with an environmentally friendly, cheap renewable plant matter has long been one of the Holy Grails in science. Z. Conrad Zhang, the lead author and a scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)-based Institute for Interfacial Catalysis, described the team's accomplishment thusly: "What we have done that no one else has been able to do is convert glucose directly in high yields to a primary building block for fuel and polyesters."...
Wine-making, meet renewable energy production: a team of undergraduate engineering students from Oregon State University has developed an environmentally friendly, biodegradable polymer derived from biodiesel and wine-making byproducts that could replace polystyrene foam meat trays in supermarkets and be used in the manufacture of fire logs, furniture and other consumer goods.
The senior chemical engineering students created this new polymer by combining glyerin, a biodiesel production byproduct, and tartaric acid, a common byproduct of wine production. "When put together, those ingredients can make a hard, bubbly polymer," said Heather Paris, one of the students. They blended sawdust and woodchips into the mixture to produce a more flexible, moldable material after their first attempts yielded a very hard, sticky substance. ...
Now here's a story you can really sink your teeth into: scientists from the U.S. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have created biodegradable, milk-based and biofuel-derived protective films. By combining the milk protein casein with water and glycerol, a biofuel byproduct, Peggy M. Tomasula and her colleagues at the ARS Eastern Regional Research Center's Dairy Processing and Products Research Unit in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, were able to develop a water-resistant, edible film that can be used as a glossy, transparent coating for groceries and other products.
They used carbon dioxide as a solvent to isolate the casein from the milk "instead of harsh chemicals or acids, which can be difficult to dispose of," according to Tomasula. Carbon dioxide, a byproduct of the glucose fermentation reaction used to make ethanol, helps make the film more water-resistant and biodegradable.
Tomasula and her team decreased the size of the CO2-casein particles, which are formed when the carbon dioxide dissolves into the milk, to improve the films' appearance and protective properties. Doing so made them more glossy and improved their ability to block moisture and oxygen permeation. ...
If you prick us do we not bleed? Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have made a polymer material that can heal itself repeatedly when it cracks, by bleeding new material. This Harry Potter-like attribute is possible thanks to an embedded vascular network in the plastic similar to that found in biological organisms. Using a modern variation of the '
lost wax casting process', the scientists were able to form micro channels throughout a substrate that are filled with a reactive 'healing fluid'. This fluid filled substrate is then wrapped with a brittle epoxy 'skin' that is doped with a catalyst. When the 'skin' is broken the 'healing fluid' fills the space and forms a seal, thus repairing the tear. Every 5 year old knows how a scab on her knee bleeds and then heals - the idea is simple. But creating a human designed proof of principle is a large step in materials science, and a striking example of learning from the biological process. The sustainability wins in the present technology are a bit of stretch. The cost of the process and the materials will keep this technology in the laboratory. The ability to create micro-channeled materials may lead to advances in counter current heat exchange systems (again similar to biological design). But the real next sustainable step is to learn how to create the materials with non-toxic, cheap, room temperature chemistry. At any rate, I imagine it will change my relationship with toys - if I step on a Lego will it bleed?
Photo Credit: J. Hanlon, Univ. of Illinois Beckman Institute
::
MIT Technology Review ::
Eureka Alert...
For anybody who's ever had to endure the smell of burning plastic for even a few minutes, this next bit of news will come as a welcome development. A group of scientists from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have just created a new synthetic polymer that doesn't burn and doesn't require the flame-retardant chemicals found in most plastics.
This makes it an alluring alternative to the plastic materials commonly used in consumer electronics and textiles which tend to be so flammable that they've often been referred to as "solid gasoline." The polymer uses a chemical known as bishydroxydeoxybenzoin or BHDB as its building block, which releases water vapor upon breaking down in a fire instead of noxious gases.
It has all the desired qualities of a flame resistant plastic, including a clear appearance, lack of halogens, flexibility, durability and low manufacturing cost. Conventional heat-resistant plastics, on the other hand, tend to be more expensive to produce and are typically more brittle and darker in color. They are also composed of additives that contain chlorine, bromine or phosphorous, which, though effective at reducing the flammability of plastics, have been implicated in human and environmental health concerns....
Whoever said that too much sugar was a bad thing? The University of Queensland and the Korean Advanced Institute of Technology have just announced the formation of a partnership to develop and patent a technology to convert sugarcane into environmentally friendly plastics and chemicals. By leveraging Queensland's strength in sugarcane production with South Korea's expertise in chemicals manufacturing, the two institutions hope to blend biotechnology with nanotechnology to build hyper-efficient biorefineries with the capacity to convert sugarcane into a series of "green" products.
Widely regarded as the "MIT of South Korea," KAIST is a world leader in the technology that enables the programming of microorganisms to create complex chemicals from feedstocks like sugar cane. UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) brings to the table its expertise in bioplastic production and characterization....
Plastics make it possible- right? But what makes plastics possible? Or for that matter what makes surfactants, plasticizers, adhesives, coalescent solvents and a host of other products possible? Up until recently the answer was oil, and lots of it. But, the hot field of
Green Chemistry has seen remarkable growth in developing oil alternatives. These new chemical synthesis routes may be able to provide green options to the chronically oil dependent industrial age products. Understanding that food crops are not likely a viable alternative to oil, companies are quickly reorganizing and merging to form new entities that can harness the power of cellulose, and turn bio-waste into pure bio-plastic. From
Metabolix to
Diversa, we have been keeping a lookout for the company that will
become the next google. The newest contender, weighing in at $15 million from Kohsla Ventures is Segetis....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 11. 9.09
