Bio-products Could Soon Lower Oil Prices by Replacing Petroleum in Plastics

Posted by Kristin Miller on December 24, 2009 at 12:08 pm

Cereplast CEO Frederic Scheer (pictured) hopes that a higher price for crude oil will soon make bioplastics attractive to major manufacturers like Dupont and SASF. (image: france24.com)

The Agence France-Presse ran a profile on Monday of Frederic Scheer and his company Cereplast, which makes biodegradable, compostable plastics that are slowly working their way into use in a host of disposable items.

Cereplast plastic compounds can currently be found in take-out cups, flatware, plates and packaging – Solo, manufacturer of single-use cups in the billions, now has a line using Cereplast, among a growing list of other bioplastic companies. Bioplastic resins are made from the starches in tapioca, corn, wheat and potatoes, and hold up well under heat and stress. For more intensive uses, Cereplast also has a “hybrid” line that incorporates a maximum of 50% petroleum derivatives, and which can be used in items such as toys and car parts. The growth of bioplastics as an industry should be of interest to any oil consumer, because plastic manufacturing takes a sizable bite out of the available supply of crude oil—in the US alone, 1.5 million barrels per year go into just the production of plastic water bottles.

The plastic is derived from starch-based resins, rather than petroleum. (image: paperblog.fr)

While oil prices appear to have stabilized for the time being, Scheer forecasts an era where the price of oil drives even chemical-producing giants like Dupont and BASF to convert to producing bioplastics instead of petroleum-derived plastic products. At current levels of demand for Cereplast, $95 per barrel is the point where bioplastics become more cost-effective: “The day where we hit 95 dollars a barrel I think all of a sudden you’re going to see bio-plastics basically explode,” he said.

We’re not there yet, but voluntary conversion to a product that uses far less of such a precious resource could do the same work as an oil price spike. Indeed, taking plastics out of the oil game could be a huge factor in keeping the price per barrel permanently low. Scheer makes a good argument for tying the economic sense of bioplastics to the environmental one: “It takes between 70 to 100 million years to make fossil fuel and you are going to use your cup at Starbucks for 45 minutes max.”

Multiply that by the staggering 110 billion plastic or plastic-covered cups (only cups!) that Americans dispose of each year, and then factor in the fact that around 70 percent of all plastic waste ends up in landfills, unrecycled–and the plastics industry starts to look like a giant sink for oil that might be better used elsewhere. Of course, there are those who might level some of the same arguments at bioplastic that have hit biofuel–that it takes away land and crops from food production, that its carbon savings aren’t what they’re presented to be. Scheer is, however, looking into algae for the next generation of Cereplast (much like many biofuel producers). The starches in algae are as resilient as those derived from other plant sources, and algae can grow quickly, in a variety of environments, and for far lower prices than other crops. Scheer hopes to have an algae-based plastic on the market by the end of 2010, and projects that Cereplast’s sales will have doubled in that time.