Summary
Oils are extracted from below ground as a feedstock for plastic at the moment, among other things this is a finite resource. Oils extracted from potatoes and algae can be sustained as long as the stock being acquired is not from the food chain. The high price of mineral oil would attract new natural oil producing farmers.
Analysis
If oil does reach a high, (above US $95 a barrel) and continues on an upward spiral there may not be an alternative, other than grow the stock.
Depleting resources will create high prices and this will push innovation. Take plastic, which is used in many applications including food packaging, car parts and building materials, it could be replaced by other material such as ceramics and wood but plastic is an ideal material due to malleable and flexible properties and in some cases its ability to be recycled. So to simply replace one raw material which has been used for years, for another which can be extracted from algae would not be an issue, in fact there would be better control of pricing, due to sustained supply. The other important question is whether there be enough raw material to to produce Bio Plastic, and if the raw material from algae and potatoes can be use in other product such as Bio fuel’s.
Taking algae alone there are many research efforts in the fuel area. The New Biopalstc Association has been launched to catalyze the research and market to the public. Companies such as Shrink Nanotechnologies is one of several companies that is using bioplastics to find a new way of making devices that will minimize the use of increasingly scarce rare metals for its solar concentrator. So the future for bioplastic would be one of organic growth.
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