Dive Brief:

• Dow is working with bioconversion company New Energy Blue via a long-term purchase agreement to create bio-based ethylene from agricultural waste. The ethylene, a gas used for polymer production, will be used as a feedstock to manufacture packaging and other products.
• Dow will support the development of New Energy Blue’s new facility in Mason City, Iowa, that is expected to process 275 kilotons of corn stover — stalks, leaves and husks that remain in the field after harvest — each year to produce ethanol, about half of which will become ethylene feedstock for Dow bio-based plastic products. 
• The agreement, announced last week, also gives Dow similar options for New Energy Blue’s next four planned projects for processing agricultural residues. In total, the five projects are expected to displace more than 1 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

Dive Insight:

The partners say this is the first purchase agreement in North America to create plastic source materials from corn stover. It’s Dow’s first agreement to use any type of agricultural residue for plastic production, although it already incorporates some other used materials such as cooking oil, according to Manav Lahoti, Dow’s global sustainability director for olefins, aromatics and alternatives. This project is also New Energy Blue’s first foray into the packaging space, according to a company spokesperson.

Valuable end markets traditionally haven’t existed for corn stover, so it is often considered waste and discarded. However, some farmers repurpose it into useful items such as animal bedding. In recent years, research has focused on using the biomass to create energy and biofuels, primarily ethanol. This benefits farmers, who can sell their corn stover to processing companies, in addition to promoting waste reduction.

The new project “allows us to start creating and incentivizing this new ecosystem where farmers are being incentivized for the waste that they typically will just leave on their farms,” Lahoti said. “Now they're able to get additional value for it, so it actually lifts up a lot of these farming communities.” 

This project replaces some fossil fuel-derived chemical use in alignment with several of Dow’s sustainability goals, such as reducing net annual carbon emissions by 5 million metric tons by 2030 compared with 2020 levels, a 15% reduction. The company also aims to “commercialize 3 million metric tons of circular and renewable solutions annually” to reduce waste.

“As we look at what we need to bring into our system to meet that goal, it's a combination of plastic waste-based feedstock, bio-based feedstock and mechanically recycled product,” Lahoti said.

The corn stover will be sourced from farms near the new Iowa processing facility, which is expected to begin operations “in the 2025 to 2026 time frame,” Lahoti said. This feedstock does not affect product integrity, nor conventional recycling for the plastic products at their end of useful life, he said. Dow will work with customers to determine in which applications this feedstock works best.

“Because the supply this specific [type] of bio-feedstock is limited, we believe that there's more demand than there is supply,” Lahoti said. “This bio-material is very attractive to customers. Because again, it comes from agricultural waste and has that element of helping the farming communities, so there's a lot of elements of positive sustainability associated with it.”