Micromidas cells make plastic Source: Micromidas

The first comes complements of Mario Vellandi, who presides over Melodies in Marketing. He sent a great story this way, with this slug: “A non-petroleum plastic made from organic waste that completely degrades in six months to a year? What’s not to love? Seriously, you rock Ryan.”

Okay, this sounds like a marvelous idea, especially considering how much petroleum-based plastic we use once, only to turn around and toss it out into landfills.

That led to watching Ryan Smith present as a social innovation fellow at PopTech 2010, pitching the company he helped co-found, Micromidas, where he serves as chief technical officer. The 6:04 video is very much worth watching.

At Micromidas, a team of entrepreneurial engineers and chemists has found microbes, when placed in a reactor that can produce high-quality plastic from organic waste, sans any petroleum additives to the formula. Best news of all, the product degrades in less than a year.

Process graphic from Micromidas

This leads to the second quote. Smith identified the problem with waste management with stunning accuracy as he spoke about how people have traditionally tossed something away. Smith said, “What we’re finding is that there is no away. There’s just somewhere else.”

Citing the huge costs involved in digging for oil to produce plastic, Smith said: “Everything you need to make plastic is actually here up on the surface of the earth. All the ingredients of sewage (free available carbon) have what you need to, make plastic.”

Micromidas, based in West Sacramento, refers to itself as a provider of microbial biorefinery technology for wastewater treatment. Last year, the Artemis Project, a consulting practice focused on 21st century water management, selected the company as one of the Top 50 Water Innovation Leaders.

Innovation from companies like Micromidas may soon be a driver in how new biodegradable plastics are manufactured and used. They also may help repower our efforts for economic recovery.

Styrofoam can be recycled

In spite of what many recycling proponents think, Styrofoam now has a place in the recycling supply chain, reports Fort Collins artist, Nancy Dobbs, who has been storing Styrofoam junk in hopes her wait would lead to getting the material recycled.  That was when she heard about one innovative company, ACH Foam Technologies, which ran a recycling operation from its corporate offices in Denver.

While Styrofoam may be regarded as a miracle substance for the packaging industry, it has long been considered a curse with no cure by recyclers and environmentalists due to an interminably long lifespan and its difficult fit in the recycling industry, where most regard it as nonrecyclable.

Thus Dobbs was happy to make the long drive south from Fort Collins with a carload of Styrofoam she had collected over the years. ACH indicated it was willing to receive the load, as long as it hadn’t been contaminated with food.

ACH,  a leader in expanded polystyrene (EPS) industry, manufactures products for construction, geotechnical, packaging, and industrial applications. ACH reports that many of its products can be easily recycled to make new EPS products, or thermally processed to be turned into other plastics materials.

Styrofoam packaging Photo: ACH

As it turns out, some methods of recycling Styrofoam have been going on since 1991, when the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers (AFPR) was formed. This organization represented some 80 companies in the expanded polystyrene (EPS) industry. Since that time, AFPR has expanded to facilitate the development of recycling and awareness communications and programs.

“The possibilities are limitless,” says ACH’s website “Our products have virtually unlimited design flexibility and can be easily customized. This design flexibility means our products can be used in almost any industry and for a wide variety of applications.”

Polystyrene does not fit very well in the category of sustainability, however, it sounds far better if it can be recycled and remanufactured into useful products. In this video,  Mike Hagood, Walmart senior director of innovations, believes the practice fits quite well with his company’s push for sustainability.

This additional video is available for those wishing to see one part of the Styrofoam remanufacturing process.

Nick Mallos, a scientist from the Ocean Conservancy, joined on the expedition to the North Pacific Gyre.

Embarking on an important journey this past August, the Ocean Conservancy set sail with San Francisco-based Project Kaisei to expand its research and help with some cleanup on the massive trash vortex that exists in the North Pacific Gyre. Four boats joined in the journey, including a barge large enough to haul away some of the trash that was found in this “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

The North Pacific Gyre, an area between California and the Hawaiian Islands, happens to be where trash from around the world is trapped – much of it plastic – due to four converging ocean currents. Some estimates report the gyre is twice the size of Texas, others argue its size goes double that of the United States.

The actual size of the garbage patch is a great question, says Nick Mallos, Nick Mallos, a marine scientist and member of Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris program who joined the expedition. He describes the trash vortex as being more like an archipelago in character, with parts being clear ocean, while other parts are dense and deep with trash.

Mallos collects data on microplastics, parts that have broken from bottles and packages into very small pieces that almost resemble confetti.  “There was this shimmering gleam of color because the water column just below the surface was littered with these objects. I was just astonished,” says Mallos. “In certain areas, the top three to six feet of water is absolutely dense with these microplastics. If you wave your hand in the water, you come up with these fragments on your hands.”

A sample of the ocean debris collected by Project Kaisei Photo: Project Kaisei

Joining on the expedition was Project Kaisei, an ongoing ocean cleanup initiative of Ocean Voyages Institute that tested ways to remove plastic from the ocean and find alternative uses for the trash. Since 1986, over 7.8 million volunteers have removed and documented 135 million pounds of debris threatening our ocean, lakes and rivers.

The 2010 expedition set out with a small fleet of three to four boats, including a barge, which will allow the team to bring back much larger amounts of debris than in the previous 2009 expedition. The team looked at remediation techniques, which include turning plastic into fuel, or other products, which can create a value for what is being removed from the ocean surface. The team also tested scaled-up trash catch methods. The report will be published in early 2011.

One goal of the expedition: to bring together new technologies, innovations, and capabilities that can both help clean some of the plastic debris from our ocean, as well as prevent it from entering in the first place.

In the course of four days through a part of the garbage patch, Mallos reports he and the team counted over 16 thousand pieces of micro plastics that were visible in a 10-meter swath in front of the boat. Plastics represented 95 percent of the junk they found. Mallos points out that the entire issue of human trash in the ocean is a challenging undertaking for the world population.

” As consumers, we need to systematically reevaluate our daily behaviors, and make choices like drinking from reusable bottles, eliminating our use of one-time shopping bags, and recycling,” Mallos says. “The sea of debris I confronted in this remote part of the ocean underscores the global nature of the problem and its magnitude. We need to devise a collaborative effort that incorporates consumers, businesses, manufacturers, and government. Together, we can craft marine debris solutions to mend our periled ocean ecosystem.”

We hope many pass on word of this endeavor.

i-plas makes lovely products from recycled plastics. Source: i-plas

Massachusetts’s grocers are decreasing the number of disposable bags being used in an effort to develop sounder approaches for waste management. At the same time, the use of recycled plastics products in the construction field is growing.

Waste & Recycling News reports that early results show the number of disposable plastic and paper bags has dropped significantly in Massachusetts following the implementation of a public-private partnership aimed at discouraging plastic bag use at grocery stores.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the Massachusetts Food Association began the program in 2009. The joint initiative to reduce the distribution of disposable bags shows 12 supermarket chains, covering 384 stores report the 25% disposable bag distribution reduction. The state and grocers have a goal of reaching at least 33% by 2013.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the innovative recycling technology at i-plas is being used to develop many attractive commercial and residential building products that may otherwise have gone to landfills. The UK company reports or plastic waste that other recyclers cannot handle are being used to produce a range of recycled plastic products which outperform the traditional alternatives of wood, steel and concrete; products which are technically advanced, commercially successful and environmentally responsible.

Innovative recycling in action, c/o i-plas. Source: i-plas

UK-based i-plas has developed a comprehensive range of sustainable building products for use in construction projects for both home and export markets. Many of these recycled plastics have been developed in conjunction with major building and civil partners and effectively offer an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional methods where timber, concrete and steel are used.

One product category includes a range of fences that offer environmental, aesthetic, commercial and economic solutions. The company’s encouraging marketing claims for fencing products include:

• Lasts five times longer than timber,
• Reduces whole life cost.
• Minimal maintenance and easy to clean.
• Labor saving.
• Less flammable than timber.
• Can be cut, screwed, nailed and bolted.
• Will not rot, crack, split or splinter and is resistant to algae.
• Reduces the carbon footprint of any project.
• Is 100% recycled and can be recycled.
• UV resistant.
• Diverts material from landfill.

“ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

Ocean trash has abundant plastic.

“Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool……..

“Plastic is the most common refuse in the patch because it is lightweight, durable and an omnipresent, disposable product in both advanced and developing societies. It can float along for hundreds of miles before being caught in a gyre and then, over time, breaking down.

“But once it does split into pieces, the fragments look like confetti in the water. Millions, billions, trillions and more of these particles are floating in the world’s trash-filled gyres.”

Here are clips from Mr. Edwards’ letter (emphasis place by me):

“…we manufacture and distribute water products, mainly through Natural Foods Retailers across the Nation. We have been in business for over 15 years and our products offer consumers a way to live litter free and chemical free lives by filtering the water they drink,  they shower and bathe in, and a way to ease the problem with our nation’s landfills.
“There are many environmental issues facing the world today. One of which is the bottled water epidemic that is systematically helping to destroy the environment we live in. It takes 1.5 million barrels of oil — enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year — to make the plastic bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water, according to the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., environmental think tank. Furthermore, The kind of plastic most commonly used for water bottles — polyethylene terephthalate, or PET — is recyclable. But consumers recycle just one of every five bottles they drink, with the rest ending up in landfills, said Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute….we here at New Wave are trying to combat this by promoting re-usable bottles and home water filtration.

“We offer a full line of BPA free plastic bottles made out of Eastar™ resin, we were the first company to change from poly-carbonate when the BPA studies first came out….We are also proud to carry a corn resin bottle with a built in filter, the first of its kind, which is completely bio-degradable in 180 days in a commercial compost. With these products we hope to alleviate some of the problems facing us today.

“I would like to send you some samples to review, and possibly post on your site.
New Wave Enviro is based in Colorado and being in business over 15 years means we were green when green was still just a color.”

Thanks for your note and your innovation. Send a sample so we can share our analysis and shout loudly. And I look forward to that particular time when I can use your last quote!

Glenn,

I hope all has been well.  We are performing some research on how and what consumers think about biodegradable plastics.  The more response from the general public we receive the better the data.

Below is the link to the survey.  If you are interested in posting a link to the survey I can create a collector created just for Green Streets which would redirect the survey takers to a URL of your choosing at the conclusion of the survey as well as customize the Thank You page.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=fktlqEFDW1aNgZgWodfrRA_3d_3d
I would also provide you the survey results data.

Thank you,
Danny Clark
ENSO Bottles, LLC

North Pacific gyre source: OleLog

Nielsen reports: “Can you imagine what happens when marine garbage ends up in such a vortex? It will never leave it again, all plastic will circulate, new plastic come by and circulate. Ships continue dumping their garbage at sea, and you end up with the world’s biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean.

“It has been given different names like the “Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches”, sometimes collectively called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, or for short the “Plastic Vortex”. The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism. Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world’s oceans. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California and is first and foremost a Pacific island of rubbish twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic. In the peer review journal, Marine Pollution Bulletin, Charles Moore estimated the plastic mass in the Pacific Gyre to be six times that of plankton.

“In June (10 June to 25 July 2009) a high-seas mission departs from San Francisco to map and explore the Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists and conservationists on the expedition will begin attempts to retrieve and recycle this ugly monument to throwaway living in the middle of the North Pacific. With a crew of 30, the expedition, supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company, will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to map the extent and depth of the plastic continent while collecting 40 tonnes of the refuse for trial recycling.

“Bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips, worn down by sunlight and waves, disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent. The damage caused by these tiny fragments is more insidious than strangulation, entrapment and choking by larger plastic refuse. The fragments act as sponges for heavy metals and pollutants until mistaken for food by small fish. The toxins then become more concentrated as they move up the food chain through larger fish, birds and marine mammals.”

We hope posts such as the one above from Mr. Nielsen helps end such wasteful, polluting nonsense.

Biodegradable plastic bottles will soon be on grocery shelves. Source: Enso Bottles, LLC

What’ll it be: 10,000 years, or two years? That is the question when it comes to the life expectancy of the plastic bottle you drink from.

For those of us looking for the next level of plastic – something that’s not going to be around for eternity – even compostable – we may need to look no further than Arizona.
That’s where ENSO Bottles, LLC is making plastic drinking bottles that are – yes – biodegradable. Not only biodegradable, but when they go to the landfill, digestible to microbes making methane, which can be captured and converted to energy.

This is exactly the kind of cycle in waste-to-energy that ENSO Bottle co-founder and president, Danny Clark, wants. “When our bottles go into the landfill, the idea is that the bottled will break down and create methane.”

Thus Clark can proudly list one of his company’s operating mantras that it develops products that can create value when they are discarded. Clark says there is no exact time for how long it takes his bottles to break down, but estimated the time to be about two years.

ENSO Bottle logo on Times Square Source: PR Newswire"Our new logo demonstrates the ethos of ENSO Bottles. We chose the name, ENSO Bottles(TM) to reflect the concept and life cycle of our products. Our name and the ENSO logo, represents wholeness and the returning to where it initially began. Our bottles reflect this precept, originating from the earth, providing a value of use, and then returning to the earth in a reusable organic state."

Specifically, the bottles are designed to biodegrade, leaving behind harmless inert humus and biogases. An ENSO bottle contains an organic compound, called Ecopure, that has been added into the crude oil-based polymer chain to attract microbes.

ENSO Bottles is not the only company developing biodegradable plastic bottles. Clark says other scientists are also involved in developing plastics from renewable sources such as corn and switch grass.

Creating bottles that are biodegradable means expanding the molecular structure of the plastic, altering the polymer chain and adding nutrients and other organic compounds which weaken the polymer and attract microbial activity.

This is good news, considering more than 150 billion plastic bottles are annually produced in the United States alone, with less than 30 percent going to recyclers, with many of the remains ending as roadside or water-born trash.

He wrote an article worth reading in the January 09 issue of bioplastics MAGAZINE.

We are not at liberty to quote here because we are not subscribers. However, the article is very much worth reading. It can be obtained in the news archives of the Biodegradable Products Institute, dated March 11, 2009.