Paper or plastic? It’s a familiar question millions of people are faced with everyday at supermarkets and convenience stores all over the world. While the debate rages on about which option is actually better for the 
environment, the bigger issue is that we have become a disposable society. From take out containers to electronics, products are being made and designed for a single purpose use. Currently, at the end of most products’ lives, they are useless and often are discarded in landfills. Ecological design visionaries believe that the lifecycle of everything we use should be part of a closed loop, “cradle to cradle” process where products do not become useless waste, but can be decomposed or become food for plants and animals; or, alternately, return to industrial cycles to supply high quality raw materials for new products.
On Tuesday, June 19th from 5-5:30PM ET, Gather will host a live chat with Frederic Scheer of Cereplast . Frederic creates biodegradable containers made from corn and potato starch. To find out how his "Big Idea" fits within this "cradle to cradle" process, join the chat!
Share your thoughts on paper and plastics and learn more on the topic from Frederic Scheer. If you are not able to join, leave a comment below. You can also catch Frederic on tonight's episode of "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" at 9PM on Sundance Channel.
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Do you have a "Big Idea" for the environment? Join The Green to learn more about Robert Redford's new television series about sustainable living. To join, click here.
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Comments: 36
Your products are very innovative. My questions are:, How long does it take for them to degrade? Is it more rapid than paper? and lastly, are the containers themselves recyclable?
Thank you for yuor question. Products made from our resin when sent to a composting site will biodegradae and go back to nature with no chemical and/or toxic residues in less than 180 days. It generally depends on the thickness of the product, some will go back to nature in 30 days other in 120 days.
Cereplast is a manufacturer of bioplastic resins. We make resins using several ingredients, which are coming from agricultural background such as starches. Similar kind of starches that you can use to make pancakes. However the starches that we use is industrial and not used for human consumption.
We blend the starches and other products with minerals such as limestones (for instance) and water and create what we called a Thermoplastic starch resin.
We also used structurized and modifies starches such as Poly Lactic Acid (PLA).
We just moved into a new facility that we created completly green. We have recycled and PLA made carpet, paint with no lead, low flush toilet, environmnetal furniture. We are sorting out our trash , recycle all the water that we use in our process, recycle all the cardboard and wood as well.
We try to be a good stewardship and "put our money where our mouth is"
I have been working in this field for 15 years and I truly beleive that we need to have more ethics toward the next generations, the post industrial era has used but abused the planet and we need to repair it.... This is my personal mantra and thsi waht Cereplast is all about!
We used very large quantity of starches, the starch comes from corn but also tapioca, wheat and potatoes. I did not translate into corn bushels but if you contact our office I am sure we can do it.
San Francisco has banned plastic shopping bags. Do you see this as a trend that other cities will soon follow?
The shelf life of products made from our resin is about 2 years in standard conditions. It needs the compost environment to start the biodegradation process.
Can you name some companies that are using/selling your products on the regular?
The San Francisco trend about plastic bags is just a follow up on what is happening overseas and in Canada. Ireland, France, Nova Scotia have banned the use of plastic bags.
Although I am personally agaisnt ban, I beleive that we are ussing too many bags. Every year do you know that with only the number of nbags produced in teh USA, we could go around the earth 5,000 times!!! It is too much we need to recycle and even better reuse.
The composting infrastructure for food waste is getting organized. There are 2,500 landfills in the USA and 4,500 composting sites of which 600 are accepting food. The Western part of the USA is quite advanced like San Francisco, Seattle, Portland.
"Cradle to cradle" concept is simple. Nothing is lost everything is recouped and reuse indefinetly and not over millions of years.
Traditional plastic is made of oil, it takes 77 million years to make one drop of it. It takes 10 years to bring it to life into manufcaturing and for single use disposable as fast as 2 minutes to use then we resend it to the Earth and another cycle of 77 million years re-start is it right?
No! we have solutions and Cerepalst is part of the solution.
We manufcature resins the resins are shipped to converters that make finished products who sell them to fast food chains, etc. Among our clients we have large companies such as Genpak, Alcoa, Solo Cup, Innoware and we know that they are selling to large companies such as Smart & Final, but we do not know all the outlets yet.
among our clients are Genpak, Solo, Innoware, Alcoa, Penley....
Yes we do intend to increase our range of resins to explore additional markets beyond food service, i.e. foam & others
My background is not chemistry...It is law and Finance but for the past 15 years I have been spending 10 hours a day on biochemistry and I retain that I have a good concept of bioplastics. We have at Cereplast now 3 PhDs that are spending their time on R&D to improve our resins.
Tune into the Sundance Channel tonight, Tuesday, June 19th at 9 p.m. to see Frederic and learn more about Cereplast.
Products made of Cereplast are sold at Smart & Final and other smaller locations in retail
Sorry I mised the discussion.
Best of Luck!