Breaking Fossil Domination in Plastics: CleanTech Talk Interview with Lignin Industries CEO Fredrik Malmfors
I really enjoyed sitting down with Fredrik Malmfors, CEO of Lignin Industries, to talk about how his company and its patented technology are taking on fossil based plastics, leveraging good old fashioned horse sense, supply chains, waste materials, and … carbon sequestration technologies? As it turns out, Sweden-based Lignin Industries is a lot of things that are beneficial to the world.
We get pitched A LOT to get people onto the CleanTech Talk podcast — CleanTechnica sometimes receives 200 pitches in a day to cover one story or another, and, increasingly, this comes in the form of podcast guest pitches. Sorting through these and deciding what’s exciting is a f**king job in itself. But I chose this one because of how sensible, practical, useful, and helpful it was, and also because Malmfors said, in another article, “we need to break through the fossil domination of the plastics industry.”
The technology is based in lignin, as you might guess from the company name. Lignin is one of the world’s most common organic compounds, right up there with cellulose (the stuff that is structural and hard to digest in many plant fibers), and chitin (the stuff that makes bug exoskeletons, which tells you a thing or two about how many bugs there are in the world).
Lignin Industries uses this prevalent biomaterial, mixed in its patented process with bio-based oils to create Renol, its product, which can be used as a drop-in replacement for many otherwise fossil-based plastic additives. It has similar characteristics as polyethylene, polypropylene, and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). The differences? It’s made from biological materials, it’s biodegradable, and it’s carbon negative (in a cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Analysis).
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