Your next pair of yoga pants could be made out of corn or, more precisely, from dextrose derived from corn, part of a 20 year effort toward consumer goods that are being produced from plants rather than petroleum-based materials. But a complete transition to a biobased economy won't be easy, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN).
There have been rather famous examples of corn-based disasters. In 2007, Democrats in Congress mandated a switch from plastic to corn-based spoons. The utensils melted in soup and broke easily. When they lost control of Congress they asked incoming Republicans to repeal the program so their environmental base would not be angry. Government-mandated requirements won't work but Melody M. Bomgardner, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that a range of companies, from start-up firms to industrial giants, have been searching for ways to create viable sustainable materials. Invista and Genomatica say they will pursue nylon intermediates from sugar. Coca-Cola is making progress toward a 100 percent bio-based soda bottle (they're already at 30 percent). But trading in all conventional materials for ones that might be more sustainable won't be easy.
The main challenge to this shift is economics. Prices for biobased raw materials to feed the supply chain must drop to competitive levels. Manufacturers must invest in new facilities to process the raw materials. And ultimately, it's the consumers' pocketbooks that will likely decide just how far this trend will go.
Source: American Chemical Society