This is particularly encouraging news. That cattail fiber is been actively exploited and proven out in commercial practice was actually unexpected. The prior literature was showing a slow emergence of any interest in the product.
We have already covered the viability as a food and ethanol feedstock for industry. This is a bonus that needs investigating.
Nothing is said of the actual manufacturing process, but the additional item suggests that extracting ordinary fiber is not very easy. In the event, they produce a batter that is then molded. Sounds pretty straight forward.
Since I am anticipating an emerging cattail industry, having additional markets for the byproducts is invaluable. It would be much more satisfying to produce cattail pulp from the boreal forest if only because it is an annual cycle rather than a multi decadal cycle.
Santa Barbara’s Be Green Harvests Cattails for Packaging
Biodegradable But Here to Stay
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Overpackaging has been a curse word in eco circles since the ’60s, but retailers’ prime directive of luring customers and protecting products with gleaming, durable plastic is not resisted easily.
So it’s safe to say that Be Green Packaging, a two-year-old company with downtown Santa Barbara headquarters, is a significant player in the rush toward eco-conscious packaging. Just this month, Be Green Packaging struck a deal to supply containers for salad bars at every Ralphs supermarket throughout Southern California. The company has been supplying salad containers to Whole Foods Markets worldwide since May 2007.
Founded by Ron Blitzer, who also cofounded Bank of Santa Barbara, and his venture capitalist partner Robert Richman, Be Green makes fully compostable packaging out of bulrushes — Typha orientalis, commonly known as cattails. Compared to molded foam, which can take a thousand years to biodegrade, or most plastics, which never disintegrate, the bulrush containers take just 20-90 days to return to the soil, claimed Megan Havrda, Be Green’s eco-adviser and marketing director.
Blitzer and company like the cattails because they grow quickly and voluntarily. They can be harvested without having to be planted or cultivated. They simply are collected, according to Havrda, from hillsides in China’s Manchuria region, near where the company’s factories are located. They are not taken from marshes or waterways, Havrda said, which might harm those ecosystems, but from the hillsides above the water. Besides interfering minimally with the natural environment, Blitzer noted, this style of harvesting, called “wildcrafting,” does not replace food crop space.
Although pulp factories are major polluters, Blitzer said, “Ours in China is state-of-the-art.”
The containers are unbleached and nontoxic. Havrda said that less than 50 parts per million of an FDA-approved moisure and grease barrier, DuPont's Zonal, is mixed into the bulrush batter before it is molded into form. Although pulp factories are major polluters, Blitzer said, “Ours in China is state-of-the-art.” The containers are freezer- and microwave-safe.
Because Ralphs, like most supermarkets, wants clear plastic tops for the salad containers primarily to prevent people from smuggling more expensive items out of the store inside the salad container. Be Green contracts Oxnard’s Coolpak for tops made of recyclable plastic. (While biodegradable plastics do exist, the FDA does not allow their use as food containers.) Coolpak, which supplies Trader Joe’s, is working on converting that chain to biodegradable containers for its highly packaged vegetables and fruits, Havrda claimed.
Although Whole Foods customers might be expected to shell out a little more for sustainable containers, most supermarkets might not: The containers have to be priced competitively, and one of the things that makes them so - besides fluctuating oil prices is that they can be transported more efficiently. Four of Be Green’s meat trays, for example, take up the space of a single foam meat tray.
The company’s principals are an interesting mix of eco-evangelists and hard-nosed business types. Richman, the venture capitalist, has “brokered amazing deals in many industries; he just has an incredible sense for businesses that can grow exponentially,” Havrda explained. Havrda herself has impressive environmental credentials. She has guided backpacking tours, served as development director for Women’s Economic Ventures, and lived in the sustainable township of Auroville, on the Bay of Bengal in India. She also helped UCSB archaeologist Anabel Ford create a reserve and surrounding development at the site of the Maya city of El Pilar. For the last several years, Havrda has owned her own land development companion — three of them, actually specializing in green building and inner-city revitalization.
Blitzer, who moved to Santa Barbara in 2001, has made a lucrative career of manufacturing and marketing plastic products. Until recently, he owned Nation’s Plastics, a private company whose clients include Starbucks. Be Green began as Blitzer’s vision, primarily: “I decided I wanted my legacy not to be polluting the planet,” Blitzer said.
Since beginning this business, Blitzer and Richman have traded in their gas-guzzlers for hybrids. Their business cards are printed with soy ink and they drink from green-certified beverage bottles instead of paper cups. With business so booming, one must wonder what would happen if Be Green runs out of bulrushes. Havrda doesn’t see that happening. “Bulrushes grow across the entire Western Hemisphere, too. There is no shortage, and if there ever were, we’re flexible and savvy enough that we could use another fiber.”
This second item gives us a little insight of the difficulties involved.
Researcher
Songsak Somchak, Silpachai Sri-Uthai, Natthaporn Chumsamui, Asst.Prof.Surchai Bavornsethanan
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
Tel. 0-2470-9124 Fax 0-2470-9111
Rationale
Narrow-leaf cattail is a kind of weed growing in marsh, swamp and wild and deserted areas. It is easy to find and is a short-lived plant that lives for several years. Apart from its use in wicker, it has been found that narrow-leaf cattail contain cellulose fibers which can be separated and spun to produce yarns and woven into a fabric. This fabric can replace linen, cotton, and synthetic fabric. This would be a way of making the most of natural resources and could reduce importation of raw material yarns and fabrics from abroad. To separate fiber form the leaf, chemicals are used to remove the peel covering the fiber to leave only the fiber. Then the fiber will be separated by a needle. By this method the fiber obtained is not very strong due to its exposure to chemicals. Besides, this fiber separation process is slow; it takes a long time and the cost of fiber extraction is high.
Our study indicates that the fiber of cattail is inside the leaves. It is impossible to rasp the outer surface the separate the fiber as the surface of cattail leaves is delicate and breaks easily. As for the methods of peeling it by hand and extracting fiber with a needle, it takes a lot of time and money. The conclusion for the design is to cut the leaves vertically in two pieces, thus opening the surface for fiber extraction. The cut leaves are conveyed to the fiber carding set, which consists of rollers for gathering the fiber. There are several sets of rolling brushes moving at different speed. Apart from gathering fiber, they also serve as a conveyor. The carding brushes have been designed specifically so that the fiber left on the brushes can be easily removed after carding. Most importantly, the processes must be synchronized and can run uninterruptedly.
Application
A comparative study has been conducted between hand carding and machine carding. The result is that for the same amount of time, machine carding yields more productivity than hand carding and less damage is found on the fiber. So, this machine is a prototype.
