Sestar Sustainables and “Plastics From Wood” are two Cade Prize semifinalists that have grown from the University of Florida chemistry department’s Miller Research Group, led by Dr. Stephen A. Miller.
Miller is the creator of Plastics From Wood, while former student – and 2010 Cade Prize finalist – Ryan Martin leads Sestar Sustainables, developing PolyEsterAcetal plastics. Both companies aim to create biodegradable and biorenewable plastic polymers. In short, they’re looking to make new plastics that will degrade in months or years rather than in centuries and that are not made from petroleum.
Although Sestar Sustainables and Plastics From Wood have different goals and are based on different chemistry, they both seek to offset the environmental impact of petroleum-based plastics. Common all-carbon-backbone plastics, which make up more than 99 percent of all plastics in use today, can take more than 1,000 years to degrade. Triggered by a composting environment (like a landfill), the plastics created by these two companies would degrade as quickly as a year, or even a few months.
The polymers are biodegradable, allowing microbes and fungus to degrade them, but they are also designed to degrade abiotically, or without life. This means that in landfills, where there is little life due to chemical conditions, the plastics can still degrade quickly.
Sestar Sustainables is an offshoot of another UF startup, Sestar Technologies, developing new solar technologies. Sestar’s polyesteracetal plastics will look to replace polyethylene-based milk jugs and plastic shopping bags, which make up nearly two percent of all plastics. About 1 trillion of the bags are used each year, and they can stay in a landfill for millennia. Sestar’s bags would degrade in a few years.
Polyethylene is the most used plastic in the world, accounting for 30-40 percent of plastics used, especially in the shipping industry. Both companies could make a huge impact on the $400 billion packaging industry, which relies heavily on polyethylene plastics.
The polymers created by Miller’s Plastics From Wood have a number of applications – from drink bottles to environmentally friendly polyester textiles. His plastics are created using a plant product – that usually winds up as waste – called lignin.
Currently, both companies are working to scale up their synthesized polymers and to collaborate with manufacturers to test and produce the plastics on a large scale. According to Miller, both companies have already met one of the greatest challenges – proving that their plastics can match the thermal properties of petroleum plastics by using natural building blocks.
“It’s tough, doing it specifically from nature, but we pulled off the chemistry so we’re building some momentum,” Miller said.
Miller hopes the exposure of the Cade Prize will help spread the word about the companies, making it easier to find people willing to invest in a new technology.
“First and foremost, the Cade Prize is another stamp of approval from a community of scrutinizing people that say this is an interesting innovation,” he said. “The more people you have look at your technology and realize its potential, the easier it will be market to people who are more business savvy.”
To find out more about the Cade Prize, visit CadeMuseum.org and keep an eye on the blog for more on the Cade Prize Sweet 16. Click here to see past profiles.
