One Michigan Company Brings Corn to Fight Against Plastic Waste BY TIMOTHY COLONNESE, PRESIDENT, KTM INDUSTRIES
Cornstarch is not generally considered biotechnology. But when Holt-based KTM Industries works its magic, cornstarch becomes an exciting technology that is solving one of the world’s biggest problems – plastic pollution. In its most-recent figures, the EPA states that half of all the plastic in has ever existed was made in the last 13 years, and that only 9% of the annual plastic sold in the United States is recycled. When considered together, that adds up to really bad news for people and the planet. While much of the focus of plastic pollution is on consumerbased activity, i.e. retail food containers and shopping bags, a growing amount of plastic use – and resultant waste – is tied to packaging used in e-commerce and other one-time uses. For these applications, most companies select plastic packaging to protect products from breakage in the form
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of polyethylene or polyurethane foam and to protect from thermal damage in the form of polystyrene (Styrofoam) foam. These materials have been used for over 50 years and are generally considered the standard. That’s the environment where, in 2002, KTM Industries launched Green Cell Foam as a well-performing substitute for the fossil fuel-based foams that dominate the packaging industry. The cornstarch-based product is an environmentally sustainable alternative to traditional plastic packaging and it doesn’t require recycling. Green Cell Foam is a BPI-certified safe, compostable material that is designed to easily melt-down-the-drain. Despite some initial successes, most notably with Sony, sales of Green Cell Foam were quite meager over the next several years. The cost premium was considerable and very few companies were really interested in making a switch to new and unproven “green” technologies. Additionally, KTM struggled to persuade major packaging companies to incorporate Green Cell Foam in their supply chains. In short, despite having a breakthrough product that could help solve a global problem, KTM was in trouble.
