Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune

Logan, Utah – July 19, 2008 – One word: plastics, say Utah State University researchers who are developing a new way to manufacture biodegradable plastics that don't come from petroleum and can break down in landfills.

The team won $7 million in state funding to develop a factory of bacteria fueled by sunlight that can draw carbon dioxide from the air for a carbon source -- other, crop-based bioplastics produce the global warming gas.

The genetically modified bacteria can produce a useful waste byproduct: plastics.

Utah State engineers Ronald Sims and H. Scott Hinton and biologists Jon Takemoto and Daryll DeWald were awarded the funding for a synthetic biomanufacturing center. It came from USTAR, a state program for leveraging new technology and market innovations from state-sponsored research.

The market for bioplastics, a tiny niche in the $250 billion global plastics market, is expected to double by 2012 as rising oil prices and environmental regulations crimp petroleum-based products, according to the Utah State scientists.

On Friday, Utah State announced the hiring of Leland Foster as the biomanufacturing group's interim executive director. Foster, a retired executive of Logan-based HyClone Laboratories, has a Utah State doctorate in biology and taught microbiology at Oklahoma State University.

Foster will recruit more scientists and industry partners and bring a commercial focus to the effort, said Ned Weinshenker, Utah Starte's top USTAR liaison.

Bioplastics' main benefit would be reducing from 10 percent the share of U.S. petroleum consumption that goes into plastic. The types that are biodegradable also could help compensate for the country's slow progress in recycling -- only about 6 percent of U.S.-made plastic was recycled in 2005, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The most widely used bioplastic is made by NatureWorks LLC of Minnetonka, Minn., a unit of Cargill & Teijin Ltd. of Japan. Corn-based and biodegradable, it is made without genetically modified bacteria. But some of the corn that goes into it is modified, raising environmental concerns. The company says that protein from the corn is destroyed in processing.

NatureWorks already is used in dozens of products, including water bottles -- other bioplastics aren't transparent.