Green Plastics — The Next Wave?
The entire green revolution is a brilliant marketing campaign, one that corporations around the world are seizing upon. Sure, there are some strong 
environmental benefits to develop ways to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, conserve precious resources, and recycle waste into usable products. I only hope that what is being developed is truly safe, clean, durable, and affordable. If it is, then go for it!
For its part, Japanese automaker Mazda is working on developing plastics made from waste wood and other plant material, hoping to use this material in its cars by 2013. Being developed in collaboration with Hiroshima University, The Bioplastic Project has been established to develop a material stiff enough to be used for vehicle bumpers and with enough firmness to be used to make car dashboards.
The development process for green plastic parallels what is used to make second generation biofuel, such as using waste plant material from wood shavings which is turned into ethanol that is then converted into ethylene and polypropylene.
Perhaps the biggest benefits of developing green plastic is that Mazda claims this process is carbon neutral and, unlike other materials made from soy or cornstarch, does not require tapping a food resource (contrary to the photo).
Green plastic sounds a lot like the methods being used by Coskata and other companies to develop cellulosic ethanol. Could it be the next wave in the environmental manufacturing revolution?
(Source: Mazda Japan)
Trackbacks
4 Responses to “Green Plastics — The Next Wave?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Cool stuff. I’ve never heard of bioplastics before. I cover biofuels on my blog listed above and on my biofuel forum at http://www.biofueldebate.com but I learn something new everyday. It’s funny that Mazda of all companies is going green. I remember when my buddy got his 1995 RX-7 powered by a Wankel rotary motor. Car was fast as heck but had serious emissions issues! Probably got like 15 miles to the gallon too. Good for Mazda going green.
Biofuel Blogs last blog post..More Biofuels Bashing
June 27th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Biofuel, I think the term “green” will end up being one of the biggest marketing mantras of this century. Not to say that a lot of companies aren’t going to offer some very fuel efficient and/or earth friendly products, but they’ll probably be selling a lot of everything else too.
The wankel engine is awesome but it isn’t fuel efficient by any stretch. In some ways it is less complicated than the typical internal combustion engine, making it unique for certain.