Can This California Startup Brew Sustainable, Guilt-Free Plastic From Sugar?

Can This California Startup Brew Sustainable, Guilt-Free Plastic From Sugar?

A new partnership aims to brew the raw materials needed for greener bioplastics

















One-third of a car's parts are plastic. If a new way of making plastic with biology plays out, not ... [+] only could we have lighter and more fuel-efficient automobiles, we could also enter an era of guilt-free plastic.





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Henry Ford made a splash at the 1941 city festival in Dearborn, Michigan. There, he and his team of chemists debuted a car unlike any the world had seen: The soybean car, as it came to be known, bore a glossy white body made entirely of plastic. Ford promised such vehicles would be lighter and safer than the steel-wrapped ones he was famous for manufacturing. In a move reminiscent of a Tesla



TSLA

event, Ford even brought an ax down on a plastic car hood to demonstrate its superior strength.



Ford saw a bright future in plastics. "Literally tens of thousands of articles and manufactured automobile parts now made of metals will be made plastically from materials grown on the farm,“ he told the New York Times



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.