Less plastic =greener planet

By JULISSA McKINNON, Register Staff Writer

They're built to break down. That's the idea behind the design of green disposable containers.

Bury these disposable cups and containers and it's a matter of years, not centuries for the "corn plastic" or "spudware"-- a potato-based alternative to hard plastic -- to safely decompose.

Advocates of such compostable products see them as a healthy alternative to the damaging environmental effects of plastic and Styrofoam -- petroleum-based materials that for the past 60 years have dominated the world of to-go food and beverages.

While compostable containers and bags are generally more expensive than the time-old plastic and Styrofoam standards, those who buy them say the price is worth it. That's because they're convinced these biodegradable products are the path to a less trash-filled and less toxic planet.

Clear corn plastic cups and bags -- made from the resin of corn's agricultural waste -- can cost up to four times the price of the plastic ones. That's down from a couple years ago, when corn plastic was seven to eight times more expensive.

"The price of petroleum went up and corn plastic didn't go up," explained Steve Levine, the Napa resident who co-founded and co-owns Excellent Packaging, a company that manufactures and distributes clear corn plastic cups and bags, spudware, and other compostable products. "As oil prices go up the price of plastic goes up."

Levine predicts that production costs will continue to drop as demand for these green products grows.

Business owners like Arik Housley, who owns the Ranch Market in north Napa and Yountville plan to keep buying the green food and beverage holders regardless of the steeper price.

Housley said in recent years more consumers have started asking about the environmental impact of their purchases, from whether they can recycle their portable coffee cup to what their office paper is made of.

He said consumer consciousness is partly what motivates him to pay four to six times more for spudware -- the potato-based alternative to traditional plastic utensils.

"Look at companies like Whole Foods. People go there specifically because they see it as an environmentally friendly business," Housley said.

For now Ranch Market isn't raising the 99-cent price for a cup of coffee to cover the more expensive eco-tainers, which use a cup lining made from corn instead of petroleum-based chemicals.

Levine supplies products -- from clear corn plastic to spudware to bagasse (sugar cane residue) plates -- to several corporate giants including Yahoo, Genentech, Nummi Motors, and Sodexho, the food management company that caters for 15,000-plus venues in the U.S.

Levine's venture started back in 2004, when he spotted a biodegradable plate while dining at Picante, a Mexican restaurant in Berkeley. There he discovered the plate had been made from bagasse.

A huge producer of sugar cane, China historically relied on bagasse products until Styrofoam gradually replaced them in recent decades. China had the machinery to make the bagasse, and Levine sought out the few manufacturers already supplying bagasse products to Europe and Australia.

Levine said he hopes to rely less on Chinese bagasse and turn more toward domestic agricultural wastes, like the rice straw left after the Central Valley's rice harvest.

"The goal is to be making these kind of products locally," Levine said. "That reduces your carbon imprint because you're not having to move the product thousands of miles."

Excellent Packaging's clear corn plastic products are manufactured in the Midwest close to where the corn resin is collected from Nebraska farms.

Levine said there are five other distributors of the bagasse, corn plastic and other compostable products in the Bay Area alone. He doesn't view these fellow distributors so much as competitors because he wants to see the products penetrate the mainstream, so costs go down for everyone -- producers and consumers alike, he said.

"Right now the green products out in the world don't even show up on pie charts," he said. "We're on the ground floor, but that's a great place to be as a business."

Levine is hardly alone in thinking that green products are a promising investment.

A new 100 percent compostable wine shipper made of cornstarch emerged earlier this year at a wine symposium in Sacramento. The cornstarch shipper provides an alternative to the Styrofoam traditionally used to ship wine. Up until this latest product -- called the Original Earth Shipper from Delta Packaging, Inc. -- the only wine-shipping alternative to Styrofoam was using cardboard egg carton as padding for the bottles. Though environmentally friendly, the egg carton was often passed over, because unlike the new cornstarch packaging it didn't provide any temperature protection and high heat spoils wine, explained Mike Meneghelli, a consultant for Delta Packaging.

As with other new compostable products the cornstarch wine shipper's earth-friendliness costs a pretty penny. It costs about $1 or $1.25 to ship two bottles of wine with Styrofoam. It costs about $4 to $5 to ship the same two bottles with the new cornstarch model.

Still, Meneghelli believes the environmental awareness among some wine connoisseurs would make it feasible for wineries to offer a compostable shipping option for a few dollars extra.

"People don't know what to do with the block of Styrofoam that comes with the wine. They feel guilty," he said. "It's just a matter of saying 'It's time.' Consumers have a much greater environmental awareness than they did 10 years ago. They know our kids' kids will inherit the waste we're making today."

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