| GRN Recycle Talk FAQ Answer |
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 12:13:45 -0400 (EDT) From: FRIEDMAN.FRED@EPA.GOV (Fred Friedman) Subject: Re: Styrofoam peanuts/starch peanuts (Ben Kelley)
July 24, 2000
Dear Ben Kelley,
Degradable, starch-based packaging has a long development history and a very spare, short, and unistinguished history of viability.
In 1972-5 Time, Newsweek and similar magazines carried articles about biodegradable plastics. Many of the articles don't deal with styrofoam peanuts, but that is one of the items mentioned for replacement by a degradable-based substance, usually starch of one kind or another.
More of the same resurfaces in 1988-89 e.g.:
Methods to manage plastics in the waste stram: Report to Congress by US EPA, 1990.
Issue brief: Degradable plastics, by Martin Lee, Congressional Research Service, June 8, 1988.
Biopolymers: Making materials nature's way, by US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.(I don't know the date, but this office is closed; get the report from NTIS if anyone carries it still.)
1993 again sees renewed interest. E.g.:
Office of Industries, US International Trade Commission, New technologies to increas industrial uses for corn products, August, 1993.
And then 'long about '97, Dow and Cargill start the hype up again, except it is now done by two corporate giants, so it is treated seriously. As seriously as napalm. Monsanto, UnionCarbidse, Willow Ridge Plastics, Indaco Manufcaturing, Ltd. of Ontario, and Showa Denko have also produced competing versions of the bio-polymers recently.
However, the time of measurement of these petroleum-substituting products is not now for obvious reasons of representativeness.
- Research Library for RCRA