Sustainable: New biodegradable plastic bag is in the works

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Arkansas startup buys patent for U technology

An Arkansas-based startup is hoping to turn a technology that originated at the University of Minnesota into a widely accepted alternative to plastic bags.

The bags, under development by Fayetteville, Ark.-based cycleWood Solutions, would be made from a material called lignin, which cycleWood claims is biodegradable within 150 days.

Lignin exists in all plant life and is a largely discarded waste product from the biofuels and papermaking industries. Although brittle in its raw form, cycleWood says it can be made into a material that is as thin and malleable as plastic derived from petroleum.

While taking a graduate course at the University of Arkansas, cycleWood’s leaders say they stumbled upon the patent for the technology on the website for the University of Minnesota’s Office for Technology Commercialization. They quickly recognized its potential to create an eco-friendly substitute for plastic.

“I don’t want to say it’s a Band-Aid but it’s a good fix — whether it’s temporary or permanent — because we’re not asking the consumer to do anything differently,” said Nhiem Cao, cycleWood’s president and chief executive officer.

Last September, Cao and his colleagues exercised an option to purchase the patent, which emerged from the work of U of M biochemist Simo Sarkanen. Sarkanen declined an interview request for this story.

The challenge now: bringing the bags to commercial-scale production and persuading retailers to use them.

Customer choice

Plastic bags were introduced in the United States in the 1970s. In recent years, an increasing number of retailers offer discounts to customers who bring reusable bags for their purchases. Some, like Whole Foods, offer only paper bags to customers. But plastic remains prevalent at many stores.

Aaron Sorenson, a spokesman for Edina-based Lunds and Byerlys, said the company purchases 50 percent paper bags, 45 percent plastic bags and 5 percent reusable bags — a breakdown that provides a glimpse into customers’ habits.

“The customers speak loud and clear when they come into our store, and a significant percentage of them continue to choose plastic,” Sorenson said.

Statistics on plastic bag use range widely, but plastics made up 12 percent of the municipal solid- waste stream in 2010, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Less than 8 percent of that plastic was recycled, the agency said.

Large retailers such as Minneapolis-based Target Corp. and Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have defended their use of plastic bags as a matter of consumer choice and have instead put their efforts toward recycling programs and promoting reusable bags.

“At Target, we offer our guests paper, plastic and reusable bags and empower them to make the choice that fits their lifestyle,” Shawn Gensch, the company’s senior vice president of marketing, said on the company’s corporate blog.
Target officials declined to say how many plastic bags they use annually or to speculate about whether they would consider using cycleWood’s alternative.

Price of bags

CycleWood’s leaders say they are optimistic their bags will be viable, however.

One reason is cost. CycleWood’s bags are expected to cost roughly 1.5 cents per unit compared with 1.2 cents for traditional plastic bags, which could become more expensive amid rising oil prices. Other biodegradable bags — made from corn or potatoes — can cost as much as 10 times that amount, cycleWood’s founders say.

Cao and his colleagues are still obtaining biodegradation certification and finalizing an arrangement with a manufacturer to pilot the production of the bags. A Dallas-based venture capital firm has invested in the project and retailers have expressed interest, but cycleWood declined to say which retailers have been contacted about using the bags.

CycleWood has already found success at several entrepreneurial competitions since introducing its lignin-based biodegradable bags, including the Wal-Mart Better Living Business Plan Challenge, San Diego State University’s Venture Challenge and a first-place award in the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup in Arkansas that earned the company $20,000.
The company was also a 2011 finalist in the Cleantech Open in the Southeast region and is now among three finalists in the material science category for a 2012 Edison Award, which is expected to be announced April 26.

Commercial production

The hope is to bring the bags to commercial scale by the end of the year and to have between 2.25 billion and 3.5 billion circulating in the United States by 2015. In the future, cycleWood hopes to deliver the raw product to manufacturers across the country. The equipment used to make traditional plastic bags can be easily converted to make the lignin-based bags, they say.

“As we scale up we can scale up fairly quickly, and it’s something that could spread across the country fairly quickly,” said Kevin Oden, cycleWood’s chief operating officer.

The developments come as efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags continue to spread.

San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags in 2007 and recently expanded the prohibition to include not just grocery stores and chain pharmacies but restaurants, gift shops, hardware stores and boutiques.

Nearly a dozen state legislatures and a growing number of cities have considered bans or surcharges on plastic bags. Austin, Texas, is the latest example.

Italy, China and Delhi, India have also banned plastic bags, and the European Commission is considering a ban of its own.

The most recent effort to limit plastic bags in Minnesota was a 2010 bill calling for a five-cent surcharge on plastic bags that consumers could recoup if they returned them to retailers to be recycled.

Still, recycling efforts have spread across the state.

Minnesota Waste Wise, which gathers and recycles plastic bags from retailers around Minnesota, has collected more than 1 million pounds of plastic since its inception in 2003. More than 150 stores now pay a small fee to participate in the voluntary program.

Kate Worley, Waste Wise’s executive director, said the program is most beneficial to small retailers, which, given their scale, do not have enough material to sell alone on the open market.

“We provide an option for businesses that don’t really have any other option available to them,” she said.

Even if more plastics are recycled, cycleWood officials say there is no way to capture all of the plastic that circulates, but they hope their product will eventually spread around the world.

“What we don’t want to do is just hold onto the technology and keep it all for ourselves,” said Cao, cycleWood’s president. “We want to make sure it’s used for the good of the whole planet.”