Much of the early research on bioplastics was supported by Henry Ford, who believed strongly in the potential of the soybean. One famous 1941 photo shows Ford swinging an ax head into the rear of a car to demonstrate the strength of the soy-based biocomposite used to make the auto body. But soy quickly lost out to petrochemical plastics. “In those days you had a lot more oil around, and you could dig it up all year round,” Tao said. “You didn’t have to wait until the growing season.”

And there was another problem: permeability. The soy plastic was not waterproof. “Petroleum is biologically and relatively chemically inert, “ Tao explained. “Most living systems require water.”
Fossil fuels —inexpensive, abundant and water resistant— quickly dominated the plastics market. Now, agriculture-based plastics are back in the running, and with the type of catalysts developed by Coates and others, a whole new array of polymers has become commercially viable.

Choosing carbon dioxide as a feedstock for a polymer was not an obvious choice. It was what Coates called “a dead molecule”. “CO2 has almost no reactivity,” he said, “and that’s why it’s used in fire extinguishers.” So what made him choose carbon dioxide? “It’s abundant and cheap. We picked it for environmental and economic reasons, not for its reactivity.”

Richard Wool, a University of Delaware chemist, works with a material even less glamorous than orange peels: chicken feathers. Wool and his graduate students designed a composite made from soybeans and the down of chicken feathers. After seeing the composite, a Tyson Foods engineer approached Wool, offered him two billion pounds of chicken feathers, and an unlikely partnership was born. Despite the madcap premise, Professor Wool used the material to design a circuit board he said is a lighter, stronger, cheaper product with high-speed electronic properties. In short, the feathers allow extra air flow and do not expand like plastic when heated, so the hotter temperatures that come with higher speeds are less problematic.

... contd.