Currently, bioplastics remain a fraction of the $130 billion global plastics business and account for an estimated 5% or less of total annual plastics output. Much of that output is still used for short-use purposes, such as food packaging and disposable utensils.Hall...
C. It consumed too many crops and building blocks. D. It was not well received by the market.3. How did Rheinberger and his team improve PLA?D A. By changing its biological structure. B. By boosting molecules in PL A. C. By attacking weakened links in monomers. D. By weakening its...
Given their cheap cost and functional properties, plastics are deeply intertwined with UPFs, enabling these highly profitable business models, from farm to fork. On the farm, they support industrial agriculture to produce a handful of low-cost crops and animal-sourced ingredients such as maize, ...
Growing all that corn or sugarcane or beetroot takes a lot of farm land that could otherwise be used to grow crops for food or ethanol. On the other hand, if we've got to have our plastics, it could be worth the sacrifice: When the food company ConAgra switched from petroleum-based ...
Given their cheap cost and functional properties, plastics are deeply intertwined with UPFs, enabling these highly profitable business models, from farm to fork. On the farm, they support industrial agriculture to produce a handful of low-cost crops and animal-sourced ingredients such as maize, ...
Bacteria and fungi can produce plastics, as well as their constituent monomers, from renewable biomass, such as crops, agricultural residues, wood and organic waste. Bacteria and fungi can also degrade plastics. We review state-of-the-art microbial technologies for sustainable production and ...
Mitigating burden shifting from bio-based plastics Using biomass for the remaining virgin plastic production leads to an unsustainable burden shift from climate change to other Earth-system processes if energy crops are used (Fig. 3, green bars). Impacts on biosphere integrity increase because of hi...
made from plants such as corn & soybeans. Consequently, there is a risk of contamination as the crops are commonly sprayed with pesticides when on the farm & can easily be transferred or contained in the end product. Biodegradable plastics are those which possess the attributes of composability...
a bio-based plastic that is more expensive but also more versatile than PLA. The microbeads the two companies are developing are made by fermenting cornstarch, though they could also be made from non-food crops such as switchgrass. PHA microbeads will degrade into carbon dioxide and water in ...
Constantz (1989) proposed a method for combining solar distillation and drip irrigation to simultaneously desalinize water and apply this water to row crops. A simple device was constructed primarily of sheets of plastic, which uses solar energy to distill impaired water and apply the distillate to...