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Science Technology

Scientists Attempt to Replace Crude Oil With Sugars 179

Posted by Zonk from the just-don't-do-that-in-a-recipe dept.
amigoro writes with a link to the Press Esc blog, discussing a possible replacement for crude oil in plastics, fuels, and other industrial uses. The post outlines findings to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Science. Essentially, researchers at the Institute for Interfacial Catalysis are attempting to process the sugars in plant matter into an oil-like compound, a daunting challenge. "Glucose, in plant starch and cellulose, is nature's most abundant sugar. 'But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging,' Zhang said. 'In addition to low yield until now, we always generate many different byproducts,' including levulinic acid, making product purification expensive and uncompetitive with petroleum-based chemicals. Zhang, lead author and former post doc Haibo Zhao, and colleagues John Holladay and Heather Brown, all from PNNL, were able to coax HMF yields upward of 70 percent from glucose and nearly 90 percent from fructose while leaving only traces of acid impurities."
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Scientists Attempt to Replace Crude Oil With Sugars

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  • A better idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:08PM (#19520231)
    What about the guys who wanted to convert dead people to fuel? [wired.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
      And make shit-burgers, and get an apology out of Union Carbide (didn't succeed in that, but did make them look like the assholes they are.) Personally I think that's a great idea, though; I'm not going to be using my fat ass when I'm dead. Someone might as well use it to take a road trip.

      • It could never work (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Gription ( 1006467 )
        Using dead people for oil production would just drive up the price of Soylent Green.
        • GREAT comment. Soylent Green economics is interesting. This is probably Dr Death aka Dr. Jack Kevorkian's next death trick.

          Back to the glucose oil energy topic. I suspect oil from glucose might be the dawn of a very bright new age. Grow your own road trip.

          A breakthrough like this is in the offing. We have had too many tiny incremental steps with energy.

          Thanks,
          Jim

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )
      I'd be inclined to conclude that the energy involved in converting dead people into fossil fuel likely outweighs the energy you'd get out of it.

      That happens even with existing fossil fuel too... it's just that we happen to get existing fossil fuel energy for "free" because the earth has been soaking it up from the sun and accumulating it for a few hundred million years before we even started to tap it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by brunascle ( 994197 )
        couldnt we do the same thing? have the dead-guy furnace fueled by burning dead-guys? seems like that would work until we run out of dead-guys. we'd have to keep making more dead-guys.

        this is getting a big crass.
        • seems like that would work until we run out of dead-guys. we'd have to keep making more dead-guys.

          That has never been a problem for mankind throughout history, so I think we won't have any problems now. :)

      • glycerine (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 )
        the energy involved in converting dead people into fossil fuel likely outweighs the energy you'd get out of it.

        Maybe the energy wouldn't be worth it, but there is lots of glycerol in people which is an expensive ingredient because products containing real glycerol are hard to find. There is considerable market demand for it, and its shoddy alternatives have developed a very bad reputation. Stuff usually has propylene glycol instead which is cheaper but doesn't taste as good, or ethylene glycol which is chea

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by smoker2 ( 750216 )
          Yeah and you don't even need to harpoon them first !
          Bit of a bother getting greenpeace blockading cemeteries though !
        • Add nitric acid, and you get nitroglycerin (according to Fight Club, anyhow).

          • Re:glycerine (Score:5, Funny)

            by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @04:48PM (#19524497)
            I once worked at a place where my boss rediscovered the formula for dynamite. They were trying to do a selenium assay on vitamin pills. RDA for selenium is micrograms per day and for the atomic absorption test you have to dissolve the sample in acid so the spectrometer can spray it into a flame and check absorption/emission wavelengths of elements in the sample. But if you dissolve a vitamin pill in acid the selenium becomes too dilute to measure.

            He was basically trying to liquify a multivitamin, which has all kinds of crap in it. Generally you use a mixture of concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids to liquify something. The pills wouldn't dissolve when he tried digestion on an open burner, because the temperature at 1 atmosphere won't get high enough. They make steel digestion bombs for this kind of situation. They're like soup cans with stainless steel armor one inch thick around a ceramic liner inside. If the temperature exceeds 50 atmospheres a little safety valve on top pops to relieve the pressure. So he decided to buy 5 of these things, to let the pressure and temperature rise without losing any contents of the five sample tablets as he dissolved them under concentrated acids.

            This turned out to be a cardinal error. The tablets had a binder made of sodium benzoate. If you heat benzoate at high temperature and pressure under concentrated sulfuric and nitric acid, it turns into trinitrobenzoate which dissolves in water all right but is also a class A explosive. So they put the five vitamin tablets in the acids, sealed the bombs, and put them in the oven at 105 C which they actually had set up in a conference room where people would write up experiments. I was across the hall with a clear line of sight to the oven when the first bomb exploded inside. It sounded like someone took 5000 dinner plates and smashed them on the floor all at once, and the oven turned into a pile of kitty litter and silicate and asbestos and the conference room filled up with brown nitrogen dioxide. Then two more exploded and fired off in different directions. One penetrated the HR office next door (they moved upstairs the next week) and one buried itself in the wall of the conference room while people were still running outside. (The other two were duds.)

            I almost got killed by a multivitamin that day. You know, you live your life, day in and day out, and you don't realize how fragile life is until one day you almost get killed by an exploding vitamin tablet. In an interstellar burst I am back to save the universe.

            Not being a native English speaker, of course my boss gets on the phone with 911 and tells them that his bombs exploded.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by oglueck ( 235089 )
          Did you just say "doesn't taste as good"? Wouldn't that imply to FEED ON DEAD PEOPLE? I rather stick with propylene glycol, to be honest :-)

      • I'd be inclined to conclude that the energy involved in converting dead people into fossil fuel likely outweighs the energy you'd get out of it.

        The 80's called, they want their science back. Ever hear of thermal [wikipedia.org] depolymerization [thermaldep...zation.org]? It was even discussed here [slashdot.org] (and here [slashdot.org], and more if you actually look.).

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *
      What about the guys who wanted to convert dead people to fuel? [wired.com]

      Exxon Green? (is people)
    • Soylent Tupperware is made out of people! PEEEOPLLLLLE!
    • Given that most of us have gotton pretty fat due to the productivity of our petroleum intensive agriculture, with its attendant pollution and noxious politics, it wouldn't hurt our reincarnation chances if we offset one final bit of oil consumption.

      The idea sort of reminds me of the Tibetan practice of sky burial.

      Sky burial works like this. When it's time to hop on the old wheel of transmigration, you have your mortal remains dropped off outside a certain village, along with a small fee (modest by American
      • You pay a fee to have yourself fed to birds?

        Why not just wander out into a desert to die and get eaten by vultures for free?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )
        As you are already dead, in terms of karma you gain or lose nothing, only your contributions during life whether negative or positive have any meaning. What other people do with your expired remains will only earn them merits for choosing to feed your ex-shell to the birds and thus, they are making a positive contribution to life.

        For a many this last minute boost would be absolutely meaningless in making up for a lifetime of life negative activity, although it might take some of the burden off their desce

    • Now, THAT would be sweet, but crude.

  • That big of a deal? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ArcherB ( 796902 ) * on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:08PM (#19520233) Journal
    Does that much crude go into plastics? I figured that the majority of oil was going to fuels. Would it be better for these guys to work with the current projects that are turning sugars into fuel rather than plastics?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by GreyPoopon ( 411036 )

      Would it be better for these guys to work with the current projects that are turning sugars into fuel rather than plastics?

      Erm, fuel was included alongside plastics.
    • Furthermore, I thought that otherwise unwanted byproducts of gasoline refinement were used for making plastics. So isn't it good to use it up in plastics? What else can get done with the waste goo after refining?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 )
      The big deal isn't the amount of oil going into plastic, it's that now we're less likely to suddenly have a plastic shortage in 20 years.
      TBH I'm more worried about running out of copper and silicon.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by cyclopropene ( 777291 )

        TBH I'm more worried about running out of copper and silicon.
        I can understand copper, but why are you worried about running out of silicon? It makes up something like 25% of mass of the earths crust.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Qzukk ( 229616 )
          It makes up something like 25% of mass of the earths crust.

          Yeah, but that's all mixed up with that damn dirt.

  • Comparison to existing products (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:10PM (#19520279) Homepage Journal
    NatureWorks have been producing plastics from corn for quite a few years now.

    Their food containers look just like traditional ones and i've got a few pairs of Teko Ingeo socks that are really comfortable.

    It's certainly an interesting field

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )
      Any idea if those are polyol plastics (polyurethane replacements)? Those are already made from sugars; you ferment or hydrogenate mono and disaccharides to make the polyhydric alcohols. The sugars, of course, come from enzymatic decomposition of corn starch.

      I get the idea that this new process is simply designed to be a more efficient chemical route, or a route to other kinds of plastics.
      • Here's what wiki says on the matter:

        "The process to create Ingeo makes use of the carbon naturally stored in plants by photosynthesis. Plant starches are broken down into sugars. The carbon and other elements in these natural sugars are then used to make a biopolymer through a process of simple fermentation and separation. The resulting resin, called NatureWorks(TM) PLA, can then be spun or extruded into Ingeo for use in textiles."

  • Oh Goody, let's use food stocks... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jinker ( 133372 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:11PM (#19520295) Homepage
    ...as inputs for ALL our industries!

    If we could wrap our heads around the idea of conservation, I think we'd be a lot better off.

    Unfortunately, since we've defined consumption as economic success, preaching conservation ends up sounding like austerity.

    • Too small (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:24PM (#19520495) Homepage Journal
      If we could wrap our heads around the idea of conservation, I think we'd be a lot better off.

      Conservation is good, but doesn't solve the problem. If 4/5th of the world weren't needing to be brought up to our standards, and the population was static or decreasing, and oil wasn't going to run out, and our oil purchases weren't funding the guys who kill our troops, and we didn't have greenhouse effects to worry about, conservation would be all we need.

      Conservation makes all those problems a little bit better. But we need to solve them completely. And until we can get them solved we should absolutely conserve as much as we can to decrease the time until implementation of a real solution.

      Actually, I think the best plan is to save oil for very remote vehicle operation and plastics, such that we can cut our production down to the point where domestic sources are more than enough, so using sugar for plastics is probably the last thing that needs addressing.

    • You hit the nail on the head.

      I've heard it said on multiple occasions that in order to replace any significant portion of our gasoline imports with ethanol, it would take up an overwhelming portion of our country's agricultural production. Even if we took the 50% of our crops that we normally export and diverted them into replacing fossil fuels, it wouldn't supply anywhere near enough.

      The problem here, in my opinion, lies more on the demand side of the equation than the supply side. Take, for example, g
      • mmm, but as is often brought up (though i'm not an expert on the matter), producing new cars to replace gas-guzzlers may expell more emissions and/or use more energy than the gas-guzzlers did in the first place. a better solution might be to get people to stop buying new cars every 2 years, and instead fix up the older, high-MPG ones.
        • We can at least be grateful our auto industry doesn't has as great of a hold on the government as the Japanese auto industry has on theirs. It is practically impossible to own a car for more than five years over there, thanks to laws that stipulate rapidly-increasing inspection/registration fees with the age of your car. I've even heard they often pack up their used cars and ship them here to our used market, since they can't be sold over there.
    • Conservation is good (I conserve as best I can), but unfortunately it's something that each person has to decide for themselves. Any attempt to force conservation on people is doomed to fail (human nature and all that).

      Nobody is suggesting that we use food stocks as the basis of *all* of our industries, but it does make sense for replacements for things that depend on the hydrocarbons we currently get from petroleum sources.

      And what about the terrible state of U.S. agriculture? Wouldn't a functioning mark
      • "Wouldn't a functioning market with good demand mean that we could finally eliminate backwards and counterproductive subsidies and instead let the market best decide how to use the arable land in the U.S. that is either sitting idle or churning out useless crops?"

        Shut your mouth!

        Sincerely,
        Associated Farm Industries, Inc.
        Taking government handouts, resisting fair trade, and throwing away perfectly good crops for 50 years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rhakka ( 224319 )
        Let the market decide?

        Ok, so people with money get food and energy, and people without get neither?

        Is that seriously what you are proposing? I get it, this is a back door attempt to address energy AND overpopulation, right?

        That's the inevitable result of "letting the market decide" though. I suppose, if you were a pramatist, you'd shrug and say something about survival of the fittest. But that assumes that the people facing starvation just decide to roll over and die without a fight.

        Or are there some "co
        • Ok, so people with money get food and energy, and people without get neither?

          What...this isn't how things already happen? You don't know that rich people in the U.S. already get better food and better health care than poor people?

          I'm not talking about getting rid of programs to help people, I'm talking about letting the market drive the farmers and the companies that make things from the crops towards more efficient use of resources. Like, for instance, using rapeseed to produce biodiesel instead of

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rhakka ( 224319 )
            Sorry, I thought I smelled an ideologue... of course there are ridiculous subsidies that cripple progress. I was reacting to a perceived blanket statement that regulation is always bad.. which is not what you said. Yes, the backward subsidies need to go away. In some cases, some subsidies may still be needed to prevent a demand for energy further increasing problems with food shortage and starvation.

            Sorry for the jerking knee.... I need to have a doctor check that out one of these days ;)
    • Why is that a problem? We've been using variants of soybean and canola for industrial purposes for pretty much as long as they've been grown in North America. In South America, there is already a sustainable fuel industry around the sugar cane (and no, it is NOT true that it takes more energy to produce ethanol from plants than you can get out of the ethanol, if it is done right).

      The thing about "food stocks" is that when we need more we can just grow more. Conservation is a great idea (and absolutely es

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bob65 ( 590395 )

        stop using electricity

        Why is that? If we conserve enough, couldn't we use existing hydroelectric power sources (like we do already http://www.bchydro.com/ [bchydro.com])?

      • Oil crops are produced at levels orders of magnitude below our petroleum use.

        And alas, it's not true that we can just grow more food stocks when we need more. Sure, to some degree we can increase it -- but there is a limit to the available arable land, a limit to growing seasons, etc. And to grow more food despite those constraints requires more energy, so you reach a point of diminishing returns quickly in growing food for energy.

        Preaching conservation sounds like austerity because it IS austerity. No m
    • No one "defined" consumption as an economic process. People were bartering for items that they need for thousands of years before economists came on the scene. Buying, selling, and trading was a natural outgrowth of that barter. Soon, people found out that they could make more money through triangle trade over great distances. They also worked out that symbols for the value of goods and services were more secure to and convenient to deal with at a distance. Thus trading houses emerged. They weren't designed

  • here's a thought (Score:5, Funny)

    by brunascle ( 994197 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:12PM (#19520311)
    hemp.

    what were we talking about again?

    • Re:here's a thought (Score:5, Informative)

      by GeckoX ( 259575 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:35PM (#19520669)
      Flamebait? I think the mods are the ones smoking the stuff, sheesh. Someone revoke that moderators privileges, total abuse there.

      Poster was actually completely on topic...though obviously too stoned to remember to provide any reasonable details. Maybe they'll fill in the blanks when they come down ;)

      Links:
      http://www.hempplastic.com/ [hempplastic.com]
      http://www.treehugger.com/ [treehugger.com]

      http://www.hempmuseum.org/ [hempmuseum.org]

      Just for starters.

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        Flamebait? I think the mods are the ones smoking the stuff, sheesh.

        Oh for crying out loud!

        Hemp doesn't contain anywhere even CLOSE to the amount of THC that Marijuana has. They may be both varieties of cannabis (and the plants do look virtually identical), but you can't get high by smoking hemp... probably no higher than you could get by smoking grass cut from your front lawn!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GeckoX ( 259575 )
          _whoosh_

          Seriously, do you really think that I don't know that? Turn your sarcasm detector on would you?

          Informative no less...bloody freaking obvious more like it.

  • Plants that grow plastic... (Score:4, Informative)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:13PM (#19520331)
    Plants that grow plastic... http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/459126.stm [bbc.co.uk]
  • He used something like this as a premise for the movie ``Sabrina'' with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. At first I thought I was just going to have to suspend my disbelief because plastic from sugar seemed stupid. Now the only problem I had with the movie has been erased. The part where a gorgeous young woman goes for a dumpy looking nerdy old guy---now that I can buy.

  • suger based polymers... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sjs132 ( 631745 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:25PM (#19520499) Homepage Journal
    Umm... Correct me please...

    Suger based polymers... This is a statement that I've been told is in the screws and plates used to hold my son's head together. (He had a major surgery and my daughter just had the same this past wednesday.) Anyways, when I hear "Suger based polymers", I assumed pastic from sugar. Isn't "polymer" a fancy way of saying plastic? The side benifit for my children are that the screws/plates are then reabsorbed by the skull as it grows/heals.

    So this Sugar/Plastic would A) reserve fuels and B) biodegrade better?

    Dibs on a name, I call it Slastar or Slastic... (c) 2007, me. :)

    • Wood is made from strings of sugars and cross linked with lignin, but you wouldn't call it plastic. "plastic" has more to do with the physical properties than with a materials origin.
  • want us to toil in their underground sugar caves....
  • if they succeed this will be a tremendous source of energy, just look at how much energy the typical grade school kid has when on a sugar rush...
  • I can understand making plastic from sugar based polymers, because it may yield some new and interesting properties, as well as be able to break down over time. Imagine if all the plastic in landfills was able to breakdown in 20 years. That seems like a good thing.

    Using sugars to make fuel, however, just seems like perpetuating an already out of control problem. Internal combustion is a very inefficient way to convert matter into energy. And like previous posters stated, it still creates CO2. I am pretty su

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by scrotch ( 605605 )
      There are millions of internal combustion engines in use right now and there is no realistic way to replace them all quickly. They should be replaced by other types of engines or just more efficient IC engines. But, it is important that there are alternative fuels for them to use in the meantime. If sugars and corn and other renewable, local, CO2 absorbing plants can be used to power these engines rather than petroleum it will be a great thing. Having more than one available alternative fuel technology is e

  • Hemp Plastics (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic [wikipedia.org]

    First sentence makes mention of using hemp plastics derived from the oil within the seeds. Hemp seems like a heartier plant than corn...it is a weed. If I recall correctly Henry Fords model T had a dashboard constructed using hemp plastics, but the Model T wikipedia entry makes no mention of it. Also hemp would reduce the demand on lumber for paper and can even be pressed into beams that do not rot as easily as traditional lumber.

    But I think we all know this will no

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anon-Admin ( 443764 )
      Save your breath, the government will never give up the war on drugs!

      Hemp is a great solution, Making 3800 gal per acre in bio-diesel from the seed, lbs of hemp flour from the remains of the seeds after pressing the oil (And hemp flour can be used in place of wheat flour)Fibers from the stalks, etc. The yield from a single acre is amazing. One acre will yield the same amount of paper as 10 acres of trees, it is easier to harvest and may be easier to process.

      It is too sad that the government and many in the
      • the government will never give up the war on drugs!

        I don't agree. I actually think that of all the legislative idiocy marijuana reform is one of the more likely to change in our lifetime. Assuming people with clear ideas on the topic avoid apathy.

        Cheers.

      • if only the government would stop the war on drugs


        Not growing hemp has nothing to do with drugs.... there are plenty of varieties which produce little THC and lots of fibrous mass. It's got way more to do with lumber lobbies and oil lobbies and cotton lobbies and all the lobbies out there that don't represent hemp...
      • However, if you want to make biofuels on a truly massive scale, you need to go to growing oil-laden algae in large tank farms. Not only do you get huge quantities of diesel fuel and heating oil, but the "waste" from the processing is an excellent source to make ethanol on a large scale, too.

        Of course, given the development of better means of electrical energy storage using nanotube-based supercapcitors, by 2025 the average personal motor vehicle might be using electric power, now that the biggest issue--sto
  • Live cells make organic matter ("food") into polypeptides. Those fibers have many of the same properties as plastics, and many more sophisticated properties. Including many essential to life.

    Why stop at plastics from sugars? We could use genetics to convert biomass into polypeptides to improve our energy (and chemical) efficiency, independence in superior materials. And since organisms make polypeptides from sunlight, water and CO2, switching from oil plastic to photosynthetic polypeptides could solve most

  • Great idea... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MadTinfoilHatter ( 940931 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @12:47PM (#19520859)
    ...I'm going to try it out by putting some sugar in my gas tank. If it works well I'll increase the amount. With a little luck I'll be able to save lots of money on gas. :-)
    • Reminds me of a car prank I heard from Car Talk on NPR. If you want to easily ruin someone's day, yet do no real harm, get a bag of sugar half-full, sprinkle some on the ground beside their car's gas tank, leave the bag sitting in plain view on the ground beside it. BUT -- don't put any sugar in the tank! That'd be property damage.

      Instead, just let them worry about it, get it checked out at the local garage (paying for an inspection), all to find there's no damage whatsoever. :)

  • Sweet crude (Score:2, Funny)

    by cocotoni ( 594328 )
    The result will, of course, be the sweet crude oil.

    Thank you, thank you... Don't forget to tip the waiters...

  • This will dissappear.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SilverBlade2k ( 1005695 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @01:14PM (#19521221)
    We all know that any and all technologies that can be used to reduce our consumption of oil eventually vanishes, or the people sell out to big oil. This will be no different.
  • If they want a plant-based plastic, why don't they just bring back celluloid? It's a proven technology.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by netik ( 141046 )
      Maybe you haven't worked with celluloid or Bakelite before?

      It works as a plastic, but it's very brittle and no where near as strong as most commercial plastics derived from hydrocarbons.

      You're certainly not going to get ABS to PEG from sugars right now (but maybe PEG, commonly found in water bottles is a good candidate to start with)
  • Whatta surprising turn of events!

    Whoda thunkit that the US might invade Cuba for their energy!

  • writes with a link to the Press Esc blog, discussing a possible replacement for crude oil in plastics
    so soon we'll be able to throw away the contents, and eat the packaging. Result (considering some of the plastic-wrapped junk food I eat)

  • Making plasting from suger would give yet another reason for toddlers to stick their toys in their mouths, causing a rise in infant deaths!

    Somebody think of the children!!!

  • This subject was brought up on the radio, and the concern was about using food sources, they explained in the short run they would use the actual grain, but would then start using the byproducts like the stalks
  • Plants suck (unbelieveably badly) at efficiency themselves. The best plants use about 2% of solar power. Of that power, only 15-20% is used for actual sugar construction (transport, water, active transport in roots being the main things).

    Then our harvesting processes are not exactly hallmarks of efficiency themselves. But let's say we actually get 70% of the biomatter into the factory.

    Then the factory processes it at about ... say 20% efficiency ? I would be extremely surprised if they got it this high ...

    S
  • We've secretly replaced Bob's Crude Oil with new Folgers Crystals(TM). Will he know the difference?

    *car explodes*
  • oh man, I can't wait for the issue of national geographic that shows EPA workers cleaning off gooey syrup from totally spazzed out diabetic seagulls.

  • Where has this writer been? Under a rock? Before plastic was ever made from oil, it was made from plants. The original plastic wrap was cellophane [wikipedia.org], made from Cellulose [wikipedia.org]. Hemp was an ideal plant for cellulose. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 [wikipedia.org], making hemp illegal, ended the use of hemp for plastics. And about the same tyme Du Pont [wikipedia.org] received a patent of making plastic from petroleum. Here's a webpage on an Eastman Kodak, yes the camera company, process: The Process of Making Trees into Plastic [mindfully.org] dated 13 May

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