Firm turns willow waste into plastic

New Zealand’s Genesis Research and Development said its subsidiary, BioJoule, has produced an environmentally friendly plastic as a by-product of making ethanol fuel. Stephen Hall, chief executive, said natural lignin, which is extracted from the shrubby willow used to produce ethanol had been made into polyurethane foam. Polyurethane is normally derived from petrochemicals. We can produce it economically and compete with petrochemically derived polyurethane but without any of the carbon footprint that comes from using petrochemical sources, Hall said. Genesis Research is a biotechnology company with core technical expertise in the fields of genomics and immunology. BioJoule was established to develop and commercialize technology for growing and refining shrubby willow to produce industrial materials such as ethanol, unsulfonated lignin and xylose. (July 14, 2007)