When the bagger at the grocery store asks “Paper or plastic?” we’re really being asked “Save a tree or clog the landfill?” In case you’re undecided, please note a third element in the equation: Choose plastic and you’re also subsidizing the petroleum industry.
Fish swim in the ocean and birds fly in the air. Western human beings apparently hang out in oil drums. From our polyester shirts and ties, to the plastic heels on the shoes we wear as we walk down the store’s vinyl tiled aisles in search of floor cleaner, baggies, adhesives and ink pens for the kid’s school project, paper napkins, plastic forks for the Christmas party, nail polish, lipstick, deodorant and WD40 to oil the squeaky hinges on our – you got it - oil-based composite laminate front door, we dwell in petrochemicalville.
When we think of oil, most of us think in terms of gasoline and diesel prices. We don’t realize the sheer number of petroleum-based chemicals in products we all use everyday: Absorbents, cleaning chemicals, surfactants, soaps, construction materials, pigments, soil amenders, fertilizers, waxes, binders, lubricants, rust inhibitors, packaging, paints, personal hygiene items … the list is endless and comprises seven to ten percent of our nation’s oil usage.
In order to wean ourselves off foreign oil, it’s not just the fuel pump we have to start thinking about, it’s our whole lives and how we choose to live them. Can anything replace our petroleum addiction? Perhaps not any one thing. But biomass products and biofuels look extremely promising as a substitute for a great number of currently petrochemical based products.
“In an economic model, it’s about your co-products,” says Peter Moulton, Dir. of the Harvesting Clean Energy Program at Climate Solutions, in Olympia, Washington . “It’s not about the oil [from biofuel oil seeds], it’s about do you have a market for the crush? Are you able to extract other things in a bio-refining sense for industrial and chemical precursors for pharmaceuticals, for plastics, for clothing, for a variety of things. Because in this sort of post-oil world, what’s critical is finding replacements for all the things we used petroleum for.”
Currently the US Department of Energy has what they call their billion ton biomass study – a reference to the estimated 1.3 billion tons of what they call ‘underutilized biomass’ in the country. What is biomass? Basically, the majority of it is comprised of wheat, corn and other grain stubbles that are left after harvest to be plowed back into the soil to regenerate and replenish the tilled farmlands with organic matter.
As usual, there is much debate about the government figures and the utilization of this resource. The agricultural community questions the total biomass estimate, and expresses much concern over whether bioengineers are calculating sufficient biomass to leave for soil regeneration in their estimation for the government’s study. “They do talk in terms of sustainability. But I don’t think they fully grasp all the issues,” says Chad Kruger, Dir. of Outreach for the Climate Friendly Farming Project at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Resources. “There hasn’t been enough research on the soil science side that’s gotten to the level it needs to convince them they can’t take as much as they want.”
Despite the potential pitfalls, biomass can be turned into a very promising fuel product -
cellulosic ethanol. At an estimated 80 to 130 gallons of cellulosic ethanol per ton of biomass, the potentials are high for biomass to work as a formidable resource in alternative fuels development and for by-products as well. Many sources point out that by-product development is where the real money is at in oil seed crop production anyway. And most agricultural experts agree that only by selling the seed and the left-over crush from fuel production for by-product sales can farmers make enough money to bother growing the crops in the first place. Why?
Skyrocketing petroleum prices are driving up prices of everything from petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers to the diesel fuel to run massive farm equipment. Independent farmers can’t afford to experiment with unknown oil seed crops that will take productive crops, like wheat, out of rotation. “There’s not enough money in these crops for them to break even; there’s not enough knowledge about how to grow the crops; there may not even be enough seeds available,” says Kruger. “We have farmers that can’t afford to grow winter wheat. We have farmers walking off the land. So we’ve got some very fundamental issues that a lot of actors in the biofuels arena just don’t grasp onto.”
Currently researchers are investigating taking crushed meal and the crude glycerin from oil seeds like flax and rape seed, and making value-added products such as a compound called glucosinolate which is natural pesticide. From fish food, to road de-icers, to industrial polymers, to substitute peat moss for the nursery industry, the potential by-products are endless. And whether they’re made from waste biomass from oil seed crush for fuel production, or biomass from regular agricultural production doesn’t matter a hill of … well, potatoes. Case in point: Cull potatoes, which are a waste product and problematic for farmers to dispose of, can be made into chitosin, which is a precursor to glocosamine which is used for arthritis medication – and very valuable.
“We think we can make a lot of these products cheaper out of waste biomass than we can out of petroleum,” says Kruger. “And anything we can do to make a product out of biomass that we’re currently making out of petroleum helps reduce our consumption.”
What you can do now
According to Kim Kristoff, chairman of the board of the national Biobased Manufacturers Association, there are three things people can do immediately to start getting off the petroleum bandwagon. Follow the advice in #1 at your own risk – and we say that because we have received conflicting information about the advisability of putting straight Ethanol in an unmodified vehicle. (Editor’s note: But what the heck – I’ve got a 1987 Dodge Caravan I use to haul my dog and my bikes around that I paid $300 for last year. I’m going to give Ethanol a go in that. It’s the only way I’ll ever find out the truth for myself.)
1) Claim your independence from petroleum as a primary fuel. “Even assuming you're driving a Suburban, you can do this tomorrow morning,” asserts Kristoff, who has a combustion and engineering background. “We've been powering one now going into the fourth-year with the standard 351 engine, nothing special, running entirely on Ethanol. … In 28 states Ethanol is available. Start with E85 if you're afraid. At least you're headed in the right direction without excuses.”
2) Buy organic and biobased products. From shampoo to floor cleaners, these products are out there. Buy them. “It still troubles me after all of the speaking engagements and traveling to run into the average hospital and find that the vast majority of the chemistries in hospitals are toxic and carcinogenic to the core,” says Kristoff. “The consumer can change that.”
3) Buy biobased textiles. Kiss polyesters goodby. Embrace the finer things in life like cotton, wool, flax, hemp and linen. “Why do we compromise and use petroleum-based chemistry?” asks Kristoff. “Beats me. They’re not even cheaper. The finest fabrics go wanting while people buy polyester.”
Messy planning
Unfortunately, the United States’ policies for the development of alternative fuels and bio-products are superficial and erratic – to say the least.
Ever increasing subsidies for the war in Iraq to protect oil interests, are pulling more and more grants and support away from public interest programs. Whether education, child care services, and health care, biomass product research or agricultural test production of oil seed crops, funding is either drying up or being funneled in increasingly narrow channels. In the case of biofuels and by-products, money is being channeled heavily towards agribusinesses like Daniels Midland and Conagra. Local county agricultural extension agents who want to help independent farmers become viable and move into this potentially lucrative field are being told by USDA program leaders that research monies and subsidies aren’t available. To qualify for major federal grant programs, unless you’re growing corn or soybeans, little federal grant monies are forthcoming.
For farmers in the northwest and California, for whom neither crop is appropriate, this leaves little hope of moving forward with alternative programs and escaping the escalating costs involved in farming. “We have some real questions in feedstock production that have to be answered,” says Kruger. “We’re ready to do this. We’re ready to put biofuel variety trials at all of our research stations all over the state ( Washington), but we don’t have the money to do it. It’s not going to be a real expensive thing for each trial. But we do need the money to put the labor and the seeds to it.”
To make matters worse, according to many private sources, recent Congressional legislation such as the Farm Security & Rural Investment Act of 2002 - which was supposed to strengthen development of crops for alternative uses – is counterproductive. For example, Section 9002 of FSRIA provides for the preferred procurement of biobased products by Federal agencies. The objectives of the program are to increase demand for biobased products, spur development of the industrial base through value-added agricultural processing and manufacturing in rural communities and “to enhance the nation’s energy security by substituting biobased products for fossil energy based products derived from imported oil and natural gas.”
Sounds wonderful. But apparently some profound loopholes and errors are also built into this legislation. Kim Kristoff, CEO of GEMTEK, one of the country’s first and largest biobased manufacturing companies, has severe misgivings about the legislation. Section 2902.5(c)(2) of the final guidelines states that the USDA will not designate items for preferred procurement that are determined to have “mature markets” which are described as “items that had significant national market penetration in 1972.” What does this mean?
Kim Kristoff, CEO Gemtek
“They have limited their intent to promote or expand biobased [products] to some rules, which virtually eliminate most natural fiber products that existed before 1972 - which is one third of all of them,” says Kristoff. “The whole notion is expanding the plurality of the rural economies based on inventions in the biobased arena which came after 1972. So for example, Ethanol per se, perhaps one of the most vital and most important products to energy independence, and certainly in a formative way the most important part of the world economy's future - just in one fell swoop is eliminated. The same can be said of many other things like cotton. It's very unfortunate. [In addition] they don't include any foods, any beverages. It is such a shortsighted bit of rulemaking that I almost wonder what ultimately was in Congress's mind at the time.”
A biobased manufacturing advocate since anybody heard of the idea, Kristoff sits on several Congressional advisory committees and was one of the original founders and current chairman of the board of the national Biobased Manufacturers Association, a group developed to promote excellence in the manufacture, sale and use of biobased products.
Kristoff makes no bones about the fact that he finds the government’s current alternative energy and product development policies appalling and excruciatingly limited.
“You're going to have to displace petroleum in any constructive way you can. End of subject,” he says. “[But] we have an energy policy that favors petroleum above all. We have no definitive plan to wean ourselves away from it. We have a president whose energy policy, if you read it carefully you understand there is actually even more money available for petroleum than ever.”
What is a Biobased Product?
Biobased products rely upon plant and animal materials as their main ingredients. They are made from a renewable resource and, with some exceptions, they generally do not contain synthetics, toxins or environmentally damaging substances. A biobased product has a biomaterial content of 90% or more (apart from water and other inorganic materials), expressed as a percentage of overall volume (if a liquid) or weight (if a solid).
• 20% or less … Low Biobased Content
• 21%-50% … Moderate Biobased Content
• 51%-90% … High Biobased Content
Americans, he says, are having the wool pulled over their eyes in a number of different ways.
The fact that government and industry analysts commonly rate the development feasibility of biofuels and biobased products in a cost per unit comparison with current petroleum based products is a case in point. Take the cost of developing, say, a biobased lubricant and compare it to the price of one currently on the market. Production costs, and therefore the sales price, are roughly equivalent at current market rates. Unfortunately the price of the current petroleum based lubricant is heavily – and invisibly - subsidized.
“Who knows how many men and women have been killed, and how many hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent … to protect and promote petroleum,” Kristoff says. “Add to that the amount of subsidy dollars, variously estimated at more than one trillion US dollars to support petroleum. That's thousands of billions of dollars that we have paid for as taxpayers - not the petroleum industry - Americans.
“You have to wonder at one point did we lose our cotton picking minds? I still run into people when I do speaking engagements who actually do believe that gasoline only costs $2.30 - $2.40 or $2.80 a gallon, when it can only possibly cost more than $15 a gallon. All you have to do divide all the billions by the number of gallons sold and you can figure real quick the real price has to be more than $15-20 per gallon.”
For true change to happen, Kristoff says the gloves have to come off and Americans have to understand the true cost of continuing our current oil-guzzling way of life. Until we have the real facts, and are willing to do something about them, we are helpless and destined for a major and very unpleasant wake-up call.
Taking responsibility
If there’s anything that’s clear about the issue of alternative fuel and product development, it’s that very little is clear. One study replaces another study; one expert contradicts another expert in a subject area that has incalculable intricacies and untold ramifications. However one thing is obvious: if we don’t take action we are up the creek, and the only possible form of transport will be manual with a hand-carved paddle – and for sure the canoe won’t be plastic or graphite.
What can individuals do? Read. Research. Talk about this stuff to friends and yes, find a cotton or hemp grocery bag and haul it around with you everywhere. Read labels. Unfortunately the USDA is not stringent about advertising or labeling of biobased products, so if you’re up to the task, research the company and find out if the product really is what it says it is. Next month the Herald will run a list of company names that produce reliably biomass based products.
We will also be running a story about a couple of small alternative fuel and products co-ops and businesses, and the obstacles the founders and members have overcome to get their products into the marketplace.
