Agriculture Products – Food for Humans Or Machinery?

Abstract

The catalyst for this paper on biofuels and bioplastics was a newspaper report which appeared in January 2007. The report stated that maize prices on the Chicago Stock Exchange had hit an all-time high, while stocks were at their lowest level for ten years. The price rises and dwindling stocks were explained by the decision by President George W. Bush to cover 10% of the country's fuel consumption with ethanol. This marked the culmination of one of the most important trends in recent decades: to use agriculture products as fuel for machines – known as biofuel – rather than as food for living creatures. Food prices, for their part, rose. All of this was justified by the argument that greenhouse emissions would be reduced as a consequence. Leading plastics producers, albeit to a lesser extent, are also interested in processing agriculture products in biorefineries to obtain intermediates for plastics production. This too is symptomatic of the current drive to produce everything from natural resources, but it is based on a fallacy. Agriculture products are not natural products; they are the result of human skill and industry. Truly natural products, by contrast, are natural gas, petroleum or crude oil, natural rubber from the rainforests. Adopting a cross-scientific approach to take account of technical, economic and social – but not ideological – perspectives, we investigated the attempt to produce everything from renewable resources. We asked how the production of greenhouse gases, specifically CO₂, can be reduced and how it can be used. Some of our answers were drawn from the writings of G. Menges. Two concepts for producing plastics from renewable raw materials – the DuPont concept for sustainability and environmental compatibility and that developed by GE Plastics (now SABIC) for environmentally compatible polymers – are discussed in detail. The conclusion we reach is that all waste, including biomass waste, must be processed using all available methods. The idea of producing everything from renewable resources – plastics, fuels, textiles, leather, etc. – is socially absolutely unacceptable.