Engineers Unleash the Power of Kenaf
Thursday began with an hour train commute to the town of Tsukuba, research headquarters for NEC Japan. For those that don’t know, NEC is a bigger name in electronics for Japanese than even Sony.
We were there to meet Dr. Iji, principal engineer in eco-materials.
Iji-san has spent almost a decade perfecting bio-based polymers to be more durable, heat-resistant and – most importantly – non-toxic.
From what we saw, mission accomplished: NEC’s bioplastic is the most environmentally sound in the world – thanks to mixing the 4,000 year old kenaf plant with corn-based PLA plastic.
Previously used for paper and feedstock, Australian kenaf growers are capitalizing on this latest application.
With 90% of the casings of cell phones and soon-to-be PC’s consisting of bio-materials, these are products that can be composted, recycled or incinerated without the messy byproducts. Iji-san has even perfected a non-toxic flame retardant – necessary for any electronic equipment.
They also showed us another bio-based plastic…with memory. Future products will blow your mind but you’ll have to wait for the documentary to see for yourself. After all, some things aren’t for free.
That said, NEC is definitely a leader in research and development of bio-based materials and we commend their excellent work.
Just looking into the wide eyes of Iji-san’s young lab assistants, I know that dedicated people are working hard towards making bioplastic a real alternative to petroleum plastics.
Thanks to Diane for the access and Iji-san for opening up his lab to the Great White North plastic hunters. The future indeed looks bright.
Out.
G+I
ps - check this out!
4 Comments:
This is awesome... Where can I find this video? Where do you post it? Please let me know
We are currently making a documentary on solutions to plastic pollution. No video will be released until completion. Thank you for your interest.
is there a mailiaing list or something so we can sign up and get info when it is available???
oh: and when is "Alphabet Soup" going to be online?? is that waiting till the documentary is out too??
I am certainly looking forward to your movie..what you're learning about is fascinating and generates hope incomparison to a lot of information on climate change:)...however I was wondering about the next step...Are you going to look at what steps are required to have this technology adopted by a wider market? Working as a strategic planner, I'm always trying to figure out how we encourage legislators/regulators to promote these technologies...who is doing the cost - benefit analysis to demonstrate the value to businesses of adopting this technology (or is it proprietary?). I guess the big question I have is that there is a huge amount of information out there...now how does that get translated into action on a bigger scale?
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