Science in Your Shopping Cart
Episode 3: Biomass
Transcript
NARRATOR: Welcome to Science in Your Shopping Cart, a new series that shows how science touches many of the products you buy at the grocery store, from new varieties of fruits and vegetables to technological advances that make your food safer, cheaper, and tastier. I’m Todd Silver.
PART I: Pallets From Almond Shells
There are over 2 million farms in the United States, many still owned by small family farmers. The environmental impact of all these farms is enormous. These farms produce millions of tons of waste per year, called biomass. Some of this is recycled back into the ground or used as cover to protect crops in the winter. However, ARS scientists are also researching ways to turn biomass into environmentally friendly products.
For this episode, we’re not going to start in a field, orchard, or lab, but rather in a distribution warehouse. Workers here are using wood pallets to help transport heavy materials. These pallets have to be firm but also flexible, and handle hundreds, if not, thousands of pounds, without being crushed. 
ARS researchers in Albany, California, have created pallets out of biomass, specifically, discarded, low value almond and walnut shells. 
GREGORY GLENN: This is amazing material. The torrefied material you blend it with traditional plastics and torrefied means its heated without oxygen. Instead of burning it chars and turns black. And then it makes it more hydrophobic which is good for plastics. So now you blend with plastics and it’ll kind of bind and form a nice composite.
NARRATOR: Dr. Gregory Glen is a plant physiologist with ARS’ bioproducts research lab in Albany, California. He works with research leader Dr. Williams Orts on developing environmentally friendly products that can replace non-bio degradable plastics. Their pallet invention is already being used by warehouses in California, with more orders coming in.
GREGORY GLENN: Plastics are a wonder at what you can do with them, and how easy they process. That’s why they’re used everywhere. There’s so much you can do with plastics, and they’re cheap.
NARRATOR: The problem comes at the end of the plastic items life; some can be recycled, but many are discarded and end up in our landfills and oceans. The scientists here in Albany are creating biodegradable and recycled plastics made from discarded agricultural materials. Like these pallets comprised of discarded almond shells.
The key to producing bio-plastics is in the machinery. Here at the Lab, researchers created a torrefied heating machine that looks more like a life-sized mouse trap game. There’s a large yellow bucket where the raw material is dumped into, and then a rectangular heating unit, followed by steel rods attached to a compression gauge. Better yet, I’ll let Drs. Orts and Glen walk you thru it. 

WILLIAM ORTS: Charcoal, plus post-consumer recycled plastic comes together in the extruder; comes out as a tube then you chop into pieces and it becomes a resin and then we give that resin to pallet makers.
GREGORY GLENN: Whole idea is take those pellets, pellets go in here, this is like a big glue gun, it heats and it pushes it out and comes out this is all heated; you can kind of see some of the plastic right there. Comes up as a ring, and then you blow air into it like a balloon, and it expands. So, now you have a tub of film. Coming up, and it gets retracted between these. And a roller grabs it, and by this time it’s cooled off. So, when you roll it it’s not going to stick together. And you start molding like a big piece of plastic. 
This piece of equipment is really important in the plastics industry for making all your bags into products. 
NARRATOR: ARS researchers and their partners are diverting thousands of tons of plastics from landfills to make pallets that are stronger, sturdier, and more flexible than wood pallets. So, not only do these new pallets reduce the amount of plastics in our landfills, but they provide an environmentally friendly use for low-value shells.
WILLIAM ORTS: Adding value to agricultural products helps the world economy, helps the farmer and most things we do will lower greenhouse gas emissions. So degradable compostable products end up helping the environment.
What we try to do when we are imagining a product is imagine its end of life. So, it has a use, and it has an end of life that prevents it from going into a landfill.
NARRATOR: Their bio-lab looks like an Island of Misfit toys, where all these discarded agricultural materials get a second life, benefitting consumers and the environment. Here, they’re developing planet-friendly drinking straws, renewable plates and cups, concrete materials made with wheat starch, and even a fiber-based replacement for Styrofoam.
GREGORY GLENN: This insulates as well as Styrofoam. We think this is going to be one of the answers to replace Styrofoam in certain applications. Those markets are really opening up and we really need to have an answer for single use containers. And still today if you look at restaurants, the Styrofoam take-out container is still used everywhere. Those are markets we want to get into, and if we can we think that’ll really make a difference as far as sustainable packaging, filling up our landfills, all of that will be reduced if we develop these technologies. This whole idea of single use disposable products that can be composted. I think that’s the future.
NARRATOR: Dr. Orts and Dr. Glen have big picture plans, where end of life materials are no longer tossed into landfills; rather they are either recycled or composted. In the future, every item you place in your shopping cart will be packaged with the environment in mind.
PART II: Polymers Out of Cotton Gin Trash
NARRATOR: We see them everywhere we shop. Plastics. They’re easy, they’re convenient, and they’re a serious concern for the environment. Discarded plastics and microplastics end up in our landfills and find their way to our oceans, posing dangers to our marine life and long-term risks to our ecosystem. 

I was reading an EPA blog that had a stunning thought; much of the plastic ever made is still around today!
A lot of our research here at ARS focuses on food, after all we are part of USDA, but we are also stewards of the environment and therefore, always looking for ways to protect our precious earth. 
ANTANU BISWASS: I hope we can leave the world greener, more greener than when we came in, you know, so hopefully we can develop some products which really helps the environment.
NARRATOR: That’s Dr. Atanu Biswas, a research chemist at the Plant Polymer Research Unit in Peoria, Illinois. Dr. Biswas is developing biodegradable plastics comprised of biomass, in this case cotton gin trash.
ANTANU BISWASS: Our goal is to make bio-based polymers using renewable resources such as agricultural byproducts. These materials are biodegradable and sustainable. In the case of cotton gin trash, this is a byproduct nobody wants. 
So, our approach is to blend inexpensive agro-based biodegradable materials such as cotton gin trash with more expensive polymers such as polyvinyl alcohol. The resulting blend will be a lot cheaper than polyvinyl alcohol itself. Moreover, (because) we cannot eat cotton gin, so there is no competition between food and plastic.
NARRATOR: Cotton gin trash is the waste material left over after cotton is processed for clothes, medical materials, and other textiles. Cotton producers still use cotton gin machines , which were invented back in the late 1800s. Farmers toss large cotton bales into the cotton gin, which looks like a huge mechanical drum with hooks, and the hooks separate the fibers from the seeds and other unwanted plant waste.  The waste piles up on the farmland, with very little value. 
Dr. Biswas is taking this cheap, abundant resource and turning it into an environmentally friendly polymer that can reduce the amount of synthetic polyvinyls used in plastics as well as shampoos, paints, and other applications. 
ANTANU BISWASS: Polyvinyl, it is kind of expensive. So we thought: Why not replace some of the polyvinyl alcohol with cotton gin trash, which is very cheap.
NARRATOR: Cost is something that’s not always talked about in science, but it is vitally important. It’s one thing to come up with an environmentally friendly product that can replace plastic, but if the new product is too expensive to produce, that’s a tough sell to industry. The beauty of agricultural waste is that it’s biodegradable, abundant, and cheap! Researchers are also finding the simplicity of biomass makes it relatively easy to turn into polymers, oils, and other earth-friendly products.
ANTANU BISWASS: Price is the key. And since we are using agricultural excess, you cannot get anything cheaper, you know. It’s kind of creating wealth from waste. That’s our approach.
NARRATOR: Dr. Biswas mentioned that industry members are very interested in his biodegradable polymer blends, and considering the amount of cotton gin trash available, it would not be difficult to scale-up to meet commercial demand.
ANTANU BISWASS: Since World War II, the synthetic polymers have drawn to dominate many of the items in our homes: clothing, toiletries, packaging containers, personal care, almost anything around us are polymers. So, for many years these materials after our use is dumped into landfills, which are unsightly and take up space. What can we do? Our solution is agro-based degradable polymers. 
These can benefit the environment in several ways. They can be formulated to have similar properties as synthetic polymer, but they are more easily disposed of and recycled. They may lessen the burden on our existing landfills and lessen the impact on environment.
PART III: Break Time
NARRATOR: Before we get to our next story, let’s look at other ARS discoveries that could benefit our ecosystem. 
For all you grill kings, ARS scientists developed “starter” briquettes comprised of porous charcoal material that can be easily lit without lighter fluid. Lighter fluid contributes to the level of volatile organic compounds in the air around residential neighborhoods.
Cat litter is a multi-billion dollar market, and that’s nothing to scratch at. There are over 90 million cats living in U.S. households, and every one of them needs a place to do their business. ARS scientists developed a bio-based cat litter made from renewable, low-value plant fibers. 
And speaking of cats, their flying feathered friends are also helping the environment. ARS researchers are turning chicken feathers into pellets, which in turn can be made into biodegradable plastics, including flower pots. 
Need more fruit in your diet? ARS researchers developed the world’s first all-fruit bar, containing 100 percent fruit with no preservatives, fillers, or artificial ingredients. Best of all, these bars are made from damaged, bruised or oddly shaped  fruit that would normally be discarded. 
Ready for a fill-up? ARS researchers are developing ways to turn unwanted, fast growing grasses like switchgrass, big bluestem, and Indiangrass, into biofuels.
Links to all these amazing research projects can be found on our podcast site. For more cool ARS discoveries, check out our online magazine, Tellus. 
Now back to the show.
PART IV: Bioproducts From Corn Waste
NARRATOR: Corn is one of the most widely grown crops in the United States. Sure, you and I eat lots of popcorn, frozen and canned corn, corn tortillas, and of course, that delicious sweet corn that puts us in the summertime mood. But corn is also used to produce ethanol, as a sugar substitute, as feed grain for livestock, and tons of other uses. 
Over 13 billion bushels of corn were harvested for grain production alone in 2019. And over 480,000 acres of sweet corn were planted during that timeframe.  But with all that product comes millions of pounds of waste after harvesting, 
Some of the corn waste, also called corn stover, is recycled back into the fields, but that still leaves millions of tons of biomass, a very cheap resource looking for a new lease on life. 
JAMES XU:  There’s a lot of agricultural waste such as rice, straw, wheat straw and corn stover, soybean stover, and sorghum stover. And even some of these byproducts like fruit peels and fruit skin, something like that. 
Because these stuff are renewable, we can use it to produce more value added products such as cellulose and nano cellulose.   
NARRATOR: That’s Dr. James Xu, research physical scientist with the plant polymer research unit in Peoria, Illinois. Dr. Xu noted that even byproducts of corn, such as ethanol, produce waste that can be turned into bioproducts.
JAMES XU:  The byproducts of the ethanol contain a lot of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. And from these byproducts we can produce cellulose and nanocellulose because they are biodegradable materials. 
Cellulose has a lot of application in like a paper production and pharmaceutical drug delivery and even food products. 
NARRATOR: Cellulose is the substance that is responsible for a plant’s strength. If cellulose is reduced to a nano scale, which is one billionth of a meter, it is called nanocellulose. Unlike cellulose, which is not soluble in water, nanocellulose can be suspended in water and form into a hydrogel, like a super water absorber. 
Dr. Xu and his team are producing biopolymers such as nanocellulose from corn waste as a replacement for popular synthetic plastic products, including pharmaceutical gel caps, cosmetics such as hair gel, even polymers for treating waste water. 
JAMES XU: Right now most of the cosmetic hair gel is synthetic polymers. These markets are huge. If we can replace only part of it. That will benefit both environmentally and then agricultural waste we can use it and add values.
NARRATOR: ARS researchers are also testing plant polymer-based bioplastics, such as starch-based and cellulose-based, as alternatives for the rubber used in shoes and even the outer shell of computers – two items primarily produced with non-biodegradable materials that too often find their way into our overburdened But the potentials uses don’t stop there.
JAMES XU: In the market right now a lot of hydrogels are not really 100 percent biodegradable. And hydrogels can absorb huge amount of water, like up to several hundred times its own dry weight. 
Last year we developed some cellulose based hydrogels which can be used like agriculture seeds coating. So, we use these hydrogels…and plant these seeds in the field. So, you don't have to water the fields; it can absorb water in the soil.
NARRATOR: With a vast number of uses being explored, nanocellulose materials can significantly reduce the amount of corn waste after harvest and add environmentally, biodegradable products into the marketplace. But first, researchers have to figure out how to make these products cost competitive.
JAMES XU: The only problem right now…the price is not really comparable to the synthetic ones because the synthetic polymers are very cheap. That's the reason the people use that.  However, the environmental impact is huge. There’s a huge ton of synthetic polymers dumped in this world every year so that is a problem.
NARRATOR: Using low-value products like corn waste after harvest certainly help keep costs down. Scientists are also researching ways to simplify the process to produce the nanocellulose material with less labor and machinery. 
The most important factor, though, is demonstrating the long-term benefits of producing biodegradable materials with agricultural waste.
JAMES XU: We are doing research about the biodegradable materials, so it's difficult to see the benefits in the very near future. But I believe our research is a long-term impact on the environment.
NARRATOR: Thanks for listening to this renewable and biodegradable edition of Science in Your Shopping Cart. Stay tuned for future podcasts, and in case you missed it, check out our other podcasts on apples, spinach, potatoes, and tomatoes. For Science in Your Shopping Cart, I’m Todd Silver.
Science in Your Shopping Cart is produced by the Office of Communications, Agricultural Research Service, a service at the US Department of Agriculture. For more information, visit www.ars.usda.gov. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, like us on Facebook, and watch us on YouTube.