Policy Catalyst

Marc A. Hillmyer, Director, Center for Sustainable Polymers, hillmyer@umn.edu

Most of us take advantage of polymer technology everyday, usually before arriving at work. We drive on rubber tires that grip the road on icy days, have a grapefruit juice out of a plastic bottle that keeps this delicious breakfast beverage fresh, and free our shoes of dirt and snow by stomping on our office carpet (no worries, the polymer fibers in this floor covering are easy to clean). However, the use of these products continually depletes our petrochemical resources and adds to greenhouse gas emissions.

These plastics don't grow on trees...or do they? There has been a recent push by the polymer industry to move toward sustainable sources for the "old polymers" we know and love to use. The building blocks for polymers have traditionally come from petroleum and natural gas. Compounds like ethylene, ethylene glycol & terephthalic acid, and isoprene are used to create polyethylene (PE) which is heavily used in many consumer products like plastic bags and packaging, polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) used in numerous bottling applications, and polyisoprene (PI) which is the base of many of our (synthetic) rubber products. Now, companies like Genencor and Goodyear are developing routes to isoprene using a fermentation process, Braskem plans on converting ethanol from renewable feedstocks like sugarcane into ethylene, and Coca-Cola just announced that their Dasani brand water will soon be contained in PETE bottles that contain "up to 30% biobased content" which will be achieved by using molasses as a feedstock for the ethylene glycol component. According to Chemical Engineering News (the weekly magazine published by the American Chemical Society), Michael Schluthesis, the director of sustainable packaging design at Coca-Cola, said "Our goal would be to end up with the same molecule at the end of the day."

Professor Swackhamer has been in invaluable resource for the center over the past few years. She has been engaged in multiple projects ranging from Green Chemistry and Risk Assessment to water and SD modeling. Thus we are happy to announce her official appointment of Denny Chair for the area of science, technology and environmental policy.

Swackhamer is an environmental chemist with a focus on water systems. She has been at the university since 1986. Swackhamer currently serves as Chair of the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission of the US and Canada. Swackhamer was also appointed by Governor Pawlenty to serve on the Minnesota Clean Water Council. Her research interests include chemical and biological processes that control the fate of toxic organic contaminants in the aquatic environment, particularly bioaccumulation of persistent compounds in fish; the processes that control exposure to environmental estrogenic compounds; and the development of contaminant indicators of ecosystem health. Swackhamer holds a Ph.D. in oceanography and limnology and an M.S. in water chemistry from the University of Wisconsin Madison and a B.A. in chemistry from Grinnell College.