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Companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Heinz ketchup have determined that plastic made from plants — not oil — makes sense both for the environment and for business. The growing demand has meant a boom in the bioplastic industry. Could this mean the end of the plastic bottle as we know it?
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Broadcast History
Aired locally on NET Radio in July 2011.
Transcript
CORN FIELD AMBIENT :03
STAND UP: This is the sound of plastic being made…3
CORN FIELD AMBIENT :02
STAND UP: In this cornfield, dark green stalks come up almost to my chest and wind around the hill in perfect rows. This field will produce thousands of bushels of corn to be turned into cattle feed, corn syrup, ethanol, and …plastic. 13
INGEO PELLETS :03
STUDIO: This might sound like corn, too, but it’s actually millions of small plastic pellets being blasted through long tubes into gleaming steel silos at a processing facility near Blair, Nebraska. 10
INGEO FACTORY :01
The pellets are plastic resin – the raw material for everything from food containers to carpet. For the last 10 years a company here called Nature Works? has used corn, instead of oil or natural gas, to make bio-plastic. Nature Works? is partially owned by the ag giant, Cargill, and it makes more bioplastic right now...
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:Recently, companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Heinz ketchup have determined that plastic made from plants -- not oil -- makes sense both for the environment and for business. The growing demand has meant a boom in the bioplastic industry. Could this mean the end of the plastic bottle as we know it? Grant Gerlock of NET News from Nebraska reports.
OUTRO:Listen to other Recycling in America radio stories on our website.
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