What is PLA?

PLA stands for polylactic acid, or Polylactide, a versatile polymer produced by NatureWorks LLC. PLA is made from lactic acid. Lactic acid is made from dextrose by fermentation. PLA stands for polylactic acid, or Polylactide, a versatile polymer produced by NatureWorks LLC. PLA is made from lactic acid. Lactic acid is made from dextrose by fermentation. Dextrose is made from starch and starch is made from carbon dioxide and water. Ingeo™ biopolymer is the world's first and only performance plastic made from 100% annually renewable resources. It offers the cost and performance necessary to compete with traditional petroleum-based materials in the packaging and serviceware markets. Clear and strong like petroleum-based plastic, but with the crucial benefit of being commercially compostable.

The basic raw materials for the biopolymer?are carbon dioxide and water. Growing plants, like corn, take these building blocks from the atmosphere and the soil. They are combined in the plant to make carbohydrates (sucrose and starch) through a process driven by sunlight called photosynthesis.

Today, NatureWorks LLC uses dextrose, a natural sugar derived from the starch in kernels of corn (maize) as the primary raw material for Ingeo™ biopolymer. (Other agricultural raw materials, such as rice, sugar beets, sugar cane, wheat and sweet potatoes, can also serve as sources for the starch or sugars used to make Ingeo™ biopolymer, so in the future, the polymer could be made from other dominant, locally available crops.)

Looking ahead, NatureWorks LLC is working to develop technologies to facilitate the use of lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks, such as corn stover, wheat and rice straw and bagasse. So, today we are using agricultural products, ‘tomorrow’ we intend to use agricultural waste streams.

Use of Corn

The summer of 2008 saw the price of corn in United States double. Many people attributed this rise in price to a relatively new corn-based product - Ethanol. In order to dispute this claim, a group of corn farmers who call themselves the "Corn Farmers Coalition" have released a document entitled The Corn Fact Book . While the document is specifically laid out to address the ethanol controversy, the arguments presented are highly relevant to using corn to produce other non-food products, and that is why a few of the major points are summarized here.

Most of the Corn Grown is Not For You To Eat
Only about 1 percent of the crop is sweet corn that we buy frozen, canned, or on the cob at the grocery store. The vast majority of the crop is instead commercial "field corn" cused for other purposes. Half the US crop goes to feed cattle, pigs, and poultry. Another quarter goes to ethanol, and 20 percent is exported. The rest goes to make food ingredients, chemicals, fabrics, and plastics. Natureworks states on their website that they use less than one-fifth of one percent of the total corn grown for grain production in the United States - .11%.

The Supply of Corn
Despite the panic in 2008 when corn prices doubled, farmers provided plenty of corn to go around and will continue to do so. Farmers produced 12 billion bushels, or $52 billion worth of corn, which also makes it by far America's most valuable crop. Even after supplying food-makers, ranchers, ethanol producers and grain exporters, America will again be able to save 10 percent of this year's harvest for the future.

Corn Prices vs Oil Prices
Corn prices haven't risen much for 60 years. The $1.24 a bushel of corn cost in 1949 had risen only by a factor of three to hit just $4.20 by 2007 while the price of oil rose 26 times. Inexpensive corn made it attractive to feed to animals an its abundance meant there was enough to use for making non-traditional products, from biodegradable packing peanuts to fabrics. The cost of a barrel of oil, according to the global consulting firm LECG, has two to three times more impact on retail food prices than grain prices, especially in 2008 as oil prices jumped to record highs.

A Few Thoughts on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)
GMO corn is approved by the USDA as well as the EPA: "The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the EPA review any environmental impacts of such pest-resistant biotechnology-derived crops prior to approval of field-testing and commerical release," says the Agriculture Department.

From Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace: "There's a misconception that it would be better to go back to more primitive methods of agriculture because chemicals are bad or genetics is bad. This is not true. We need to use the science and technology we have developed in order to feed the world's population, a growing population. And the more yield we get per acre of land the less nature has to be destroyed to do that - it's simple arithmetic. The more people there are, the more forest has to be cleared to feed them, and the only way to offsest that is to have more yield per acre."

From Natureworks: "The corn source is a typical North American mix of GM and conventional field corn used for animal feed, and that comes from local farmers around Blair, Neb., USA."

Farmers can increase production by using seeds genetically modified to produce plants that can make their own pesticides, resist drought, or even contain extra nutrients. Already, for example, genetically engineered, insect resistant cotton, soybeans, adn corn mean farmers can use less synthetic pesticides that may contaminate groundwater and

Sugarcane

Eco-Products offers a 100 percent compostable alternative to conventional tree-based paper products. Known as Bagasse, these paper items are made from sugarcane fiber after the sugar ‘juice’ has been extracted. This renewable resource is grown and harvested every year and a half. Typically, sugarcane fiber is a discarded by-product from cane sugar manufacturing, but Eco-Products uses the material, creating an end-user product and completing the circle.

Advantages of Sugarcane:
• Completely compostable, but without using any trees for production .It takes three tons of our world’s precious trees to make one ton of paper, and a tree can take up to 30 years to mature. One ton of crushed sugarcane produces between 250 and 300 kg of bagasse.
• Converting sugarcane to paper requires less energy resources compared to using tree fiber.
• Consumers can still use disposable ‘paper’ products, but with less impact on natural resources.
• If disposed of in a commercial composting facility, sugarcane items will compost in as little as 45 days
• Takes advantage of industry an by-product that is normally burned or discarded.

Plant Starch

Plant Starch is the material that we use to manufacture our high heat stability cutlery. This material is currently certified as compostable by OK Compost (a European regulatory agency). The high heat stability of PSM makes it a valuable material.