Nunok's Blog: Sugar From Trees and Grass Will Be Made Into Plastic in Next 5 Years [Science]

Sent to you by nunok via Google Reader:

Sugar From Trees and Grass Will Be Made Into Plastic in Next 5 Years [Science]

via Gizmodo by Kat Hannaford on 2/19/10

Those scientist types have been very active of late, between making ethanol fuel from orange peel and now tree-derived sugar being used to make plastic. Who'll be first to make trees from fuel?

The latter project is being worked on at the Imperial College of London, and unlike plastic made from corn it's looking like these tree and grass-derived molecules actually biodegrade faster and are better for the environment.

In the next five years we should be seeing plastic made from sugar on the market—whether it's the work of this particular project or someone else, it'll still benefit everyone. You'd be right in having doubts over how much more expensive it would be to produce, but at least it'd use less energy, and hopefully over time become cheaper the more it's adopted. [Telegraph]