Farm-Grown Bioplastic

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Agriculture is being called upon to provide not just food and fiber, but also fuel and ecosystem services like carbon sequestration. Another need that farmers might help to fill is replacing petroleum-based plastics that have inundated our landfills and oceans. Mark Remmert is the CEO of bioplastics company Green Dot.

Remmert… “There is starting to be more and more examples of companies that are successfully converting to bioplastics. And so I think it'll be very much like the groundswell that finally happened with alternative energy. For a long time wind turbines and solar panels seemed to be, you know, sort of a really fringe, crazy way to think about making power. Today, we see wind farms and solar farms going up much faster. And I think the same thing will happen with bioplastics.”

Not only is Green Dot providing a cleaner and more renewable alternative to plastic using agricultural byproducts, but they’re creating resins that can biodegrade in the ocean as well.

Remmert… “And while certainly we're not advocating that people should throw their trash in the ocean, if it does end up there, rather than turning into microplastics and dramatically affecting the ocean life, these materials can also generally biodegrade.”

One more potential market for the farm of the future.