Date: Sep 25, 2012 Author: Joanna M Foster Source: New York Times Green Blogs (
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Imagine that you could go online and rent something in your neighbor's garage rather than buy something new that you will need to use only a few times a year. Or that you could use microwave technology to transform timber residue or other waste biomass into a valuable industrial material like graphite.
Those were just two of the 50-plus entries in this year's Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, an annual competition that awards the world's largest prize for sustainable entrepreneurship. This year's $630,000 check went to Molly Morse, chief executive of Mango Materials, a California-based startup that makes a biodegradable plastic from methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Dr. Morse, who recently earned her doctorate in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, says her company uses a closed loop process to produce some of the most affordable bio-based and biodegradable plastics available.
The process starts at a waste treatment plant where methane is captured and fed to bacteria that produce a biopolymer called poly-hydroxybutryate, whose properties are similar to polypropylene. This is then sold in the form of powder or pellets to plastic companies that can use it to make a wide range of products, from children's toys to electronic casing to shampoo bottles to packaging materials.
At the end of a product's life, it can be returned to a waste treatment plant where it will decompose and produce more methane to start the cycle all over again.
"If you had a credit-card-sized piece of this plastic and you flushed it down the toilet, it would be gone in 10 to 14 days," Dr. Morse said. "Obviously, this material wouldn't be suitable for underground pipes or anything like that. But a beach toy, which has a good chance of ending up floating out at sea, or plastic coverings used to shield crops — this plastic is durable enough for that without posing the environmental risks of persisting in the environment for decades."
Currently, Mango Materials is only producing research-grade materials, but it hopes to have trial samples ready in about a year by plowing the prize money into further research.
Dr. Morse said the bioplastics market is growing fast and is expected to be worth over $5 billlion by 2018. "We intend to make mango materials part of the plastics revolution," she said.
