By GreenerDesign Staff
March 23, 2009

Food giant ConAgra has started using bioplastic material to replace conventional plastic film and labels on some of its well-know products.

The company will utilize bioplastic shrink film for tamper evident seals on its spread products like Parkay, Blue Bonnet and Fleishmann's, and it will use bioplastic shrink wrap labels around multi-packs of Reddi-Whip and Pam cooking spray.

By switching away from petroleum-based materials and to corn-based polylactic acid material, which also contains 50 percent post-industrial recycled content, ConAgra estimates it's cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 592,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent.

The bioplastic requires less energy to produce, and also requires a 20 percent lower temperature to shrink. Not only that, ConAgra says the bioplastic also performs better than conventional shrink film and provides a higher quality product.

By making the switch, ConAgra will reduce its use of PVC by more than 350,000 pounds a year and its use of Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol (PETG) by more than 50,000 pounds a year.

Last year ConAgra started another initiative to use recycled content, but in plastic frozen food trays, and now nearly all of the trays for Healthy Choice, Banquet, Kid Cuisine and Marie Callender's products have 30-40 percent recycled content. ConAgra estimates that transition will use at least 8 million pounds of post-consumer plastic a year and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15,200 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

ConAgra's new bioplastic film was developed in partnership with NatureWorks, Plastic Suppliers and Bluepack. NatureWorks, maker of the Ingeo bioplastic resin, is looking at building a second manufacturing facility. Its first, in Blair, Neb., hasn't yet reached its capacity of 140,000 tons, but due to expected demand increases, NaturewWorks is assessing locations in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas based on projected growth and availability of plant-based feedstock for making Ingeo.

Another bioplastic company, Metabolix, has had to hold off on opening its first commercial-scale bioplastic plant, in Clinton, Iowa, until at least October due to delays associated with engineering plans, though all of the plant's major equipment is in place. Metabolix makes the Mirel polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) resin, which is made using corn sugar, and has a pilot plant that makes about 40,000 pounds of resin monthly.

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