WASHINGTON, May 25, 2010 –— With the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and growing concern about the global oil supply, the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) latest ChemMatters video podcast couldn’t have a timelier topic: Using food crops instead of petroleum to make plastics.

The high-definition video podcast, entitled “Plastics Go Green,” is based on an article about bioplastics featured in ChemMatters, the ACS’ award-winning high school chemistry magazine. It is available at www.bytesizescience.com and on the Bytesize Science podcast on iTunes.

Viewers can expect an entertaining and educational saga about an important facet of green chemistry. The episode explains how scientists are making plastics with sugar from corn, sugar cane or sugar beets as a substitute for oil. These natural, renewable crops make bioplastic production more environmentally friendly than traditional plastics manufacturing as well as save petroleum.

ChemMatters has been demystifying the chemistry in our everyday lives for more than 25 years. Released quarterly, each issue contains readable articles about the chemistry used in everyday life, and is of interest to high school students and their teachers.

portal.acs.org 4 June 2010 http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=CNBP_024971&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=c627bed3-9c6d-4e8a-926f-bbde0c6839ee

This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 12:13 pm and is filed under science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.