Plastics, Or 13 Is Greater Than 2

According to a 2008 report issued by the American Chemistry Council's Plastics Industry Producers' Statistics Group, The Grand Total amount of Thermoplastic Resins produced in North America for the year-to-date period ending in March 2008 (January – March 2008) was 19,820,361 thousands of pounds, or 19,820,361,000 pounds, or 9,910,180.5 Standard tons.

This is the amount of plastic resin made from petroleum-based sources for the first quarter of 2008. Multiply by 4 and we have 39,640,722 for one year of production. Lets be generous and round that down to 30,000,000 tons.

Now lets try to replace Thermoplastic Resin with Polylactic Acid, or PLA, a plant-based resin that is said to be greener, compostable, and made from plant sources, most commonly corn.

Polylactic Acid (PLA)

2.5 kg of corn needed to produce 1 kg of (PLA)

1 standard ton = approx 907 kg, so 1 ton of PLA requires 2,267.5 tons of corn

A dry bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds. 1 standard ton of corn is equal to 35.7 bushels of dry corn. Thus 1 standard ton of PLA needs approx 80,950 dry bushels of corn.

According to the Iowa Corn Growers Association, the average yield of corn per acre is 183 dry bushels. Thus 1 standard ton of PLA needs approx 442 acres of cornfield.

30,000,000 standard tons of plastic resin made with corn-based PLA would require...

13,260,000,000 acres of cornfield

In 2007 the total acreage of farmland in the US was 2,262,000,000. That number is smaller now.

13 > 2.

Peak Oil

When the oil runs out, what will we run on? Ethanol has been dead in the water since Bush left town, but just to put in perspective what are needs are, here are some important numbers to crunch:

86,000,000 acres of corn in US by 2008 numbers

1 sq mi = 640 acres

86,000,000 / 640 = 134,375 sq miles of corn in US

US = 3.79 million sq miles, 3.5% used to grow corn

1 acre of corn = 328 gallons of ethanol

1 gallon of ethanol requires approx .003 acres

137,800,000,000 gallons of gasoline burned in 2008

137,800,000,000 gallons x .003 acres = 413,400,000 acres needed to supply enough ethanol to meet the demand for gasoline by 2008 standards.

that's 4.8 times more land needed to grow corn (but not for food)

16.8% of US land would be needed to grow enough corn to meet US gasoline demands by 2008 standards

2007 total acres of farmland approx 2,261,000,000 acres

about 18% of total US farmland used to grow food by 2007 numbers (the numbers have fallen since) would be needed to supply the amount of ethanol to meet the demands of consumption based on what was used in 2008 (that number has increased since).

No oil = fucked, but then again, we do have atomic weapons and other means of coercing the third world to hand over their land. Is there any surprise that the US is sending forces to Costa Rica to practice war games (46 warships, 200 helicopters)? New Axis of Evil. Hey man, we gotta grow corn somewhere...

Ethanol = fairy dust and unicorns, but we always have the tar sands, right?

This, of course is only considering motor fuels. We still haven't talked about plastics (and high fructose corn syrup).

Eat well tonight.