A biopolymer whose time has come

Abstract

At Silicon Valley Clean Water in Redwood City, California, an installation assembled from a shipping container, plastic piping, brackets, and a small steel reactor is testing technology that could lead to a more sustainable plastic. Mango Materials has run this pilot facility since 2015. Raw biogas—which contains methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide—from the water treatment plant bubbles through the reactor. Bacteria in the vessel metabolize the methane into the biopolymer poly(3-hydroxybutyrate), or PHB. “Once they are the fattest, happiest organisms possible, we have to break open their cells and get the polymer,” says Anne Schauer-Gimenez, Mango’s vice president of customer engagement. The polymer that Mango extracts, about 250 kg of it per year, is tested in applications such as fibers and packaging for beauty care products. Mango is among the dozens of firms attempting to create an industry around polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), a class of biodegradable, biobased polymers. Executives with