The Journey to a Green Future Is Far from Easy
When bio-based materials still rely on food crops like corn and sugarcane, we must face a triple challenge: Food Security—The balance of food security teeters between PLA plastic production and the dinner table, with each ton of polylactic acid requiring 2.5 tons of corn. Price Volatility—Data from the European Bioplastics Association shows that tens of millions of tons of crops are rapidly being converted into industrial raw materials, unsettling industry stability. Ecological Conflicts—The expansion of sugarcane fields at Brazil's rainforest edges exacerbates tensions between food prices, ecological protection, and land use.
Non-food raw material bio-manufacturing is key to resolving the “core bottleneck” in the development of the bio-based materials industry. Currently, the focus of non-food biomass utilization is on straw (a collective term for the stems and leaves left after harvesting crop grains), but the complex network structure of straw biomass and difficulties in collection, storage, and transportation make cellulose utilization far from straightforward.
Yet Innovation Continues…
Amid the global push for energy transition and resource efficiency, the palm oil industry generates millions of tons of Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) annually, while China's food industry produces an equal treasure—millions of tons of waste cooking oil each year.
Green methanol, produced from CO₂ and green hydrogen derived from renewable energy, is breaking the energy storage deadlock with its zero-carbon cycle magic. These two strategic resources, as the most atomically economical carbon sources [1], contain the key to restructuring the materials industry.
*Carbon is the fundamental element in bio-based material synthesis, serving as the backbone of organic compounds and a critical determinant of raw material conversion efficiency and cost. The carbon average price reflects the cost per kilomole of carbon available for chemical synthesis.
