It’s been over 40 years since a family friend gave young Benjamin Braddock a famous one-word heads-up in the movie The Graduate. Back in 1967, plastics were indeed the future—especially for cars. But today, Ben’s would-be mentor might choose another word: pulp.

Car parts from the same stuff we use to make paper? The idea seems…well, quaint at best. But to Dr. Mohini Sain, it’s anything but. Dr. Sain’s research focuses on “bioplastics”—materials that share key characteristics with petroleum based plastic, but are made from plant fibre sources like corn, soybean, hemp and wood pulp.

The University of Toronto scientist got his start working as a polymer-processing engineer in the pulp and paper industry. “My primary job was to improve the properties of paper,” he says, “but in the back of my mind, I was always thinking about alternative uses for wood products.” From the very beginning, Dr. Sain saw the potential for microscopic strands of plant fibre as a replacement for glass fibres to strengthen plastics, and in the late 1990s, he began to focus his research efforts exclusively in this area.

He’s since spun off a company to make the natural-fibre and plastic composites. And now he’s pushing the concept even further—with a little help on the equipment side from the Ontario Innovation Trust. His new goal is to create plastic-like materials made exclusively from natural fibre—no petroleum at all—but with the strength of steel. Bumpers, interior panels and other car parts from wood pulp may be just around the corner.

Like most materials scientists, Dr. Sain is working at the nano-scale—a nanometre being one- billionth of a metre. Using complex chemical and heat processes, he teases long cellulose fibres only a few nanometres thick from the larger bundles in which they naturally occur, then disperses them evenly in a natural resin. The result is a light, resilient and easy-to-form bioplastic with a very green pedigree. Besides being petroleum-free, the new composites would take less energy to make than steel and regular plastic—think less greenhouse gas release. And they’d be completely recyclable.

But there are even broader environmental implications. As the controversy over ethanol has shown, even “green” technologies can have a down-side, especially when they divert raw materials like corn, soy and sugar from the world’s food supply—a fact that hasn’t escaped Dr. Sain. “We have to come up with an industrial crop,” he says, “that will enable us to make these materials independent of the food chain.”

And it just so happens that nobody nibbles on wood pulp.

More Stories...