Misc

Specialty retailers are also joining the packaging revolution.  REN Clean Skincare is a good example of a retailer that is making environmentally-friendly packaging part of its offering.  The company kicked off the campaign with a splashing Earth Day celebration featuring its new partner, the Surfrider Foundation.  The campaign was aimed at making REN customers aware of the need to conserve water and keep beaches clean and plastic-free. The company is selling some of its skincare products in bottles made from plastic reclaimed from the ocean.  The bottle is part of REN’s Clean to Planet initiative to become a 100% zero waste company by 2021.  The bottle...

As a Peace Corps volunteer on islands in Micronesia it was a delightful to adopt the islanders’ use of banana leaves for everything from baking a sweet potato to serving a picnic lunch to storing leftovers.   The giant banana trees in the garden were so convenient.  Moreover, the banana leaf could not be beat for environmental friendliness.  Once used, the leaves were tossed aside to become mulch for the garden. Of course, back in the U.S.A. it is not practical to rely on banana leaves to wrap a Big Mac at MacDonald’s or ship electronics from Amazon.com. Nonetheless, there must be something better than...

The post “Integrated Graphene Producers” featured several graphene producers with novel business models that marry captive graphite sources to the technology and knowhow to produce graphene.  These are not the only graphite producers.  Although not as elegant as graphene with its svelte single-atom profile, the market for graphite has its appeal as well. Graphite has been a staple in steel industry crucibles, foundry molds and automobile brake linings.  These days graphite has moved into another even more important place in cars  -  lithium ion batteries that make electric vehicles viable as replacements for gas guzzling cars and trucks. Spherical graphite is especially desirable because the graphite anodes hold...

Graphene is a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atom arranged in a honeycomb lattice.  It is an exceptional conductor of heat and electricity and its strength is unparalleled.  Although synthetic graphite can be used to produce graphene and it offers the benefit of consistency, natural graphite is far less expensive as a source material.  Synthetic graphite is made by combining petroleum coke with carbon black in a high heat process that burns up profits as it purifies the carbon. There are several methods for producing graphene.  Exfoliation of natural graphite is perhaps the most common alternative because it produces the least defects and leaves...

by Jim Lane It’s Thanksgiving week in the United States but we are feasting alternatively on acronyms here in Digestville. I.E., e.g., ICYMI, BYND IPO PDQ, and FYI Perfect Day AKA Muufri JDA w/ ADM. As they said at Bletchley Park, let’s get out the Enigma machine and decode. In New York and California this week, the nutrition side of industrial biotechnology — and specifically, the “beyond the cow moovement is, ahem, mooving faster with news that Beyond Meat has filed for its IPO and Perfect Day has inked a Joint Development Agreement with Archer Daniels Midland(ADM) to scale up the production of dairy proteins using fermentation...

The largest producer of graphene material in Canada is NanoXplore, Inc. (GRA:  TSX-V) with its patented technology to produce graphene powders. The company has capacity to produce 25 metric tons per year in a facility that could be modified to 70 metric tons per year. Early on the company got a boost from Canada’s government with a CA$3.3 million project to reduce the footprint of electric-motor-driven systems using graphene-enhanced engineering plastics.  The project was aimed at support development and adoption of electric vehicles. At the beginning of 2019, NanoXplore raised US$31 million in new capital through a private placement of debt to a group of institutional...