bioplasticsMAGAZINE_0702

News
New
bioplastic
bottles
with
pearl-lustre effect
Biopearls R.O.J. Jongboom Holding B.V. from
Zetten, The Netherlands is a company specialized
on tailormade bioplastics injection moulding compounds.
Remy Jongboom, Direktor of Biopearls
now introduced bioplastics bottles with a pearllustre
effect. The bottles are stretch blow moulded
from preforms made of a material that is based on
PLA.
“In a cooperation with the Technical University
of Eindhoven, The Netherlands, we could test the
processing of a new formulation of Biopearlscompounds,“
says Remy. “We extruded some sort
of tapes and found out, that, when stretched, the
mechanical properties of the tapes were significantly
increased.“
In cooperation with a company that makes preforms
and PET bottles Remy Jongboom manufactured
the first preforms and 0.5 Litre bottles with
the new Biopearls compound. These bottles had
such a good quality and beautiful appearance that
not long after the first customers asked Biopearls
B.V. for the supply of his new pearl-lustre effect
bottles. The material is a blend of PLA and other
bioplastics materials that is not as brittle as pure
PLA, so that the bottles feature a certain soft touch
effect. The majority of the mix is based on renewable
resources, as Remy puts it. “And not only is the
bottle made of this Biopearls compound, the cap is
injection moulded from a similar material with a
slightly different elasticity for a good seal.“
Ideal applications are the cosmetics and healthcare
sector, as Remy points out, especially for
those neat little bottles you find in hotel rooms.
Other customer requests target applications such
as paraffin oil (lamp oil).
Metabolix and
AMD announce brand
name Mirel TM
and publish an amazing Internet survey
Metabolix, Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and Archer
Daniels Midland (ADM) headquartered in Decatour, Illinois, USA,
announced that they have named their Joint venture Telles TM , after
the Roman goddess of the Earth. Telles is now building its
first commercial scale plant for the production of PHA in Clinton,
Iowa, USA. This plant is expected to start up in 2008 and will
produce the corn-based polyhydroxyalkanoate at an annual rate
of about 50,000 tons.
The family of high performance natural plastics that are biobased,
sustainable and completely biodegradable, as the company
states, will be marketed and sold under the brand name
Mirel Natural Plastics.
Internet survey
In April of 2007 the US online market research firm InsightExpress
conducted a USA-wide online survey for Telles: Here are
some of the results in brief, detailed results and their interpretation
can be found at www.metabolix.com.
1. 72% of respondents do not know that plastic is made out of
crude oil/petroleum.
2. On average, respondents estimated 38% of plastic material
is recycled (the reality is less than 6%, according to the EPA
(U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)).
3. Nearly 40% (38.1%) of respondents said plastic will biodegrade
under ground, in home compost, in landfills, or in the
ocean (plastic will not biodegrade in any of these environments).
4. After learning that plastic is made from oil and never biodegrades,
half (50.1%) of respondents stated they would be
likely or very likely to pay 5-10% more for a natural, biodegradable
plastic. Only 24% were unlikely/very unlikely to pay
this much more.
“Everyone knows about the reliance on oil and the impact that
petroleum use has on climate change,“ said Jim Barber, President
and CEO of Metabolix. “Similarly, people see a lot of plastic
waste in the form of litter. But the fact that so many people are
unaware that plastic is made from oil and that it will persist in
the environment for thousands of years, shows the need for education
about the impact of plastic on the environment and the
various alternatives made from renewable resources.“
www.biopearls.nl
www.metabolix.com
www.admworld.com
bioplastics MAGAZINE [02/07] Vol. 2