This Company Can Make Plastic With 90% Less Fossil Fuels: Is That Enough?

Applied Bioplastics engineered a way to replace 20 to 90 percent of the fossil fuels in plastics with plant fibers from agricultural waste, resulting in a cheaper and stronger material.

Conventional plastics require almost 2 pounds of fossil fuel inputs to produce 1 pound of plastic. With annual global production estimated at 460 million metric tons and rising, plastics account for roughly 6 percent of global oil demand and about 4 percent of global emissions.

A solution that reduces fossil fuel inputs could help reduce corporate supply chain emissions, something of particular importance in regions like the European Union, California, and Australia, where emissions reporting is becoming mandatory. While this doesn’t directly tackle the issue of plastic waste, it may be a step in the right direction.

“We think of it as harm reduction,” said Alex Blum, CEO and co-founder of Applied Bioplastics. “Plastics have become deeply embedded in modern life, and there's no painless way to get them out. Our goal is to offer a cleaner, lower-impact option for a society that depends on them.”

How do you make plastic from agricultural waste?

Applied Bioplastics makes long-lasting plastics like automotive parts, pallets, crates, children’s toys and coffee mugs. “We only make durable plastics,” Blum said. “Disposable, single-use plastics are an absolute menace to the environment.”

Blum’s team takes agricultural waste, grinds it, dries it, and depending on the end product, uses it to replace 20 to 90 percent of the fossil fuel content in plastics. More plant content equals a stronger, stiffer plastic.

While plant fibers may not seem like the strongest material, the self-bonding properties of cellulose fibers are quite impressive — it’s what makes wood so strong. By reinforcing a plastic pallet with cellulose fibers from agricultural waste, the company can take its load capacity from around 12,500 pounds to nearly 20,000 pounds.

This hybrid plastic is recyclable, but it’s best recycled with itself — which is logistically difficult once it leaves the factory and something all plastics struggle with.

Not your regular bioplastics

The most commercially used bioplastic today is called polylactic acid (PLA). It is produced by fermenting plant-based sugars to create lactic acid, then chemically converting that into plastic resin pellets. Generally speaking, PLA is more expensive and weaker than petrochemical plastics, which account for 99 percent of all plastics today. It may avoid using fossil fuels, but it still uses chemical additives for color, impermeability, heat resistance or other qualities.

“There has been research to show that bioplastics are often just as toxic as fossil fuel-based plastics because they are using either the same or different toxic chemical additives,” said Renée Sharp, director of plastics and petrochemical advocacy at the National Resources Defense Council.

While Applied Bioplastics’ solution is not exempt from inflicting environmental harm, as it still relies on fossil fuel inputs and additives, it can reduce the concentration of harmful substances by replacing them with nontoxic agricultural waste like stalks, stems and husks. Using waste as an input, even on the largest scale, would not compromise food crops or raise land use concerns.

The secret to competing in a plastics economy

Using waste as an input contributes to cost reductions, but perhaps more important is Applied Bioplastics’ decentralized method of production. Rather than building a factory that produces plastic and shipping that plastic to the customer, the company provides its product as an additive package for plastics manufacturers.

“If your plastic is used in India and your factory is in Oklahoma, you’re paying 50 cents per pound to ship that plastic to India,” Blum said. “The problem is that the sale price of oil-based plastics that you’re competing with is 50 cents per pound. You are losing on price before you’ve even arrived on shore.”

By providing a drop-in solution for manufacturers, Applied Bioplastics can beat conventional plastics on cost and reduce supply chain emissions.

“The average margin for a plastic producer is 4 to 8 percent,” Blum said. “We’re doubling that, which financially incentivizes the factories to make our products, and enables us to offer the end customer a small discount.”

Plastic revolution or lipstick on a plastic pig?

While this hybrid solution reduces a lot of plastic problems, some experts caution that at the end of the day, it’s still plastic.

“Instead of focusing on creating ‘better’ plastics, companies should focus on building healthier and truly circular plastic-free reuse systems,” said Erica Cirino, communications manager at the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

“Producing things that are slightly less harmful is not necessarily bad, but it’s almost beside the point,” said Neil Tangri, science and policy director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “To reduce emissions by 20 percent, for example, that’s nice, but does that get us to a 100 percent reduction, which is what we need? Or does it lock us into something that’s slightly less emissions-intensive but still problematic?”

From the fossil fuel inputs and emissions to the end-of-life issues with microplastics and waste, plastics are not an environmentally friendly material. But perhaps something less problematic is the type of practical balance we could get excited about. 

“There are a lot of good applications for plastics that we need,” said Meg Sobkowicz-Kline, professor at UMass Lowell’s Plastics Engineering Department. “Think of all the fuel consumption we've avoided by using lightweight plastics in transportation or the lifesaving medical devices that are enabled by having plastics.”

“That said, we always need to be striving to do better,” she said. “Whether it’s through sourcing, toxicity, or at its end-of-life, there is room for improvement in all three phases of the plastic’s life.”