by Chas Bonner
While we complain about $4 per gallon gasoline, many of us buy bottled water at $8 per gallon ($.99 for a one pint plastic bottle of water). Then we run up the cost by dumping into the garbage, and current estimates are than 25% of all land-fill is plastic bottles. Decomposition of those bottles might take 1000 years, again adding to societal cost.
Naturally, there is a push for more environmentally friendly bottles, and the agriculture community is again the beneficiary. Clear, plastic bottles can be made out of almost any starch, corn, beets, potatoes, etc., by a process of fermentation which eventually produces polylactic acid which is yet another polymer.
For almost 20 years many companies such as Newman’s Own, Whole Foods or Wild Oats have used starch based bottles, but it was not until Wal-Mart decided to improve their sustainability image, and start using starch based bottles that the industry took off.
Some of the pluses of starch based containers are that it takes an estimated 65% less energy to make compared to oil-based polymers, manufacturing processes produce about 68% less greenhouse gases, corn bottles can degrade into fertilizer in short time (if properly composted), and we cannot imagine going to war over corn or potatoes.
There are always minuses to every product, but they are becoming fewer as we gain more knowledge about the product and manufacturing. Today, starch based bottles cannot take hot product; they melt. If thrown in the garbage with oil based polymers, the starch based containers lose their ability to compost, and take just as long to degrade as others.
Despite the downsides, we continue to see improvement in costs and processes, so we can foresee the day when virtually all food containers will be food based, and someday when all containers are made from reproducible sources.
And in the meantime, all of us in the agriculture business will see improvement in demand which never hurts our business.
Comments