Organic Plastics Have a Future
by Ashley Schiller
Published on June 26th, 2008
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Dow Chemical is planning to build an organic plastics plant in Brazil by 2011, reports Business Week.
The secret ingredient of the non-petroleum based plastics? Sugar cane. Dow has “mastered” the technology to convert sugar cane into the world’s most common plastic, polyethylene, according to the article. Polyethylene is used to make products ranging from shopping bags to shampoo bottles to children’s toys.
The plastics factory will be anything but ordinary. It will be surrounded by a sugar cane plantation and will run entirely on energy produced by cane. Enough extra electricity will be generated to light a city of 500,000.
A Brazilian-based company, Braskem, is building its own plant for 2010. The two companies predict that about 10 percent of Brazil’s plastic will come from sugar cane instead of petroleum by 2012, which is exciting but still less than one percent of the world’s plastic demand. If oil prices continue to rise, however, organic plastic sales will likely grow in popularity.
