Chicago restaurants face challenges when going green

Companies are looking to lessen their carbon footprints, but their efforts are not always being matched by the cities in which they reside. Take Sopraffina Marketcaffe in Chicago, for instance.

Dan Rosenthal, president of The Rosenthal Group Inc. and owner of Sopraffina, has hit a snag in his effort to turn his five Loop-located restaurants into low-waste producers.

Sopraffina uses plasticware that is 100 percent biodegradable, but must have a local non-profit company, Resource Management, haul the plastics outside of Chicago to a composting facility. The City of Chicago did not respond to requests for a comment.

"We've been in touch with the manufacturers of the products and they agree with us that products just do not biodegrade under normal [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] landfill conditions," Rosenthal said. "It's going to be something we have to reevaluate our position on it because it's a lot more expensive to buy this."

Minnetonka, Minn.-based NatureWorks LLC, the manufacturer of Sopraffina's corn-derived plastic cups, attests to the quandary facing its customers. Steve Davies, global marketing director for the joint venture with agribusiness Cargill and Japanese chemical and fiber company Teijin, wrote in an email, "Continued success depends on sufficient momentum in the marketplace. Comprehensive recovery or composting systems will not emerge until there is a sufficient amount of material available to process on an efficient scale."

He said interest in Ingeo, the biopolymer used to make commercial packaging, apparel and durable products among others, has seen increased interest in the past five years, culminating in 100 brands and retailers utilizing NatureWorks plastic.

New plastics being developed will circumvent this issue by biodegrading in a number of different environments.

Cambridge, Mass.-based biotechnology company Metabolix Inc. is on the brink of opening its first commercialized bio-based plastics plant in partnership with agricultural powerhouse Archer Daniels Midland Co. The joint venture, called Telles, is a $200 million project funded by ADM to build a plant that will create 110 million pounds of Mirel a year. Mirel is a bio-based plastic made of corn sugar.

According to the company, Mirel is biodegradable in soil, home and industrial compost facilities, waste treatment facilities, septic systems and water. Initial applications for Mirel include gift cards, industrial compost bags for organic waste and erosion control netting, according to Robert C. Findlen, vice president of sales and marketing. Metabolix will begin selling the material in the second quarter of 2009.

Findlen said Metabolix is marketing globally, particularly in places where home composting is very popular, like Europe and Scandinavia. In the U.S., places like California and Oregon have been more progressive in terms of environmentalism than the Midwest.

Findlen conceded when the pilot plant comes on-line at the end of 2008, its millions of pounds of bioplastics pale when compared with the billions of pounds of petroleum-based plastics produced worldwide per year. But Findlen and Davies agree companies who choose to go with a biobased plastic do so to become more environmentally friendly, understanding it will, in most applications, likely cut into their bottom line.