Two weeks ago, I wrote about a small sustainable plastic company, Metabolix, Inc. that had caught my attention in the previous months…but something happened that made their stock price jump up 5% in the past 24 hours. What exactly? The Target Corporation recently partnered with Metabolix to make their new gift cards out of sugar. As of today, Target uses them at 128 of it’s stores…a number that’s sure to rise in coming months. But still, I needed a few other reasons besides “Target Gift Cards” to really be impressed. There were a few reasons in particular that made me look twice at this little company with a single plant in Iowa, so here’s a few other nifty highlights:

• They’re sustainable. Instead of making petrol-based products (which would be a poor economic decision right about now), they’ve opted to use things like corn sugar, sugar cane, and vegetable oil. They currently hold over 90 patents.
• A national survey recently found that 72% of Americans DO NOT know that plastic is actually made from oil (a fact that isn’t very comforting to packaging companies and just about every consumer product known to man). Even more concerning, 10% of all that oil we import…is to make plastic! In the US alone, we’re spending over $300 billion a year….with only a tiny percentage being sustainable.
• The Economist wrote an article about them. Perhaps this isn’t on everyone’s list of indicators, but I put it on mine because those guys, simply put, don’t mess around. I look at it like this: typically if a company is praised in The Economist, odds are that actual economists and business leaders see it as making “business sense.” Other appearances: Fortune Magazine, The Boston Globe, Forbes
• Metabolix partnered with Archer-Daniels Midland (ADM), the largest ethanol producer in North America, to commericialize the production of the first ever bio-based “natural plastic” called “Mirel.” Construction on the world’s first “green” biorefinery, specifically for natural plastic production in Iowa is just about complete.
• ADM is in the process of expanding to Brazil, the world’s #1 sugar and ethanol producer. I’m a fan of global expansion.
• Metabolix’s “Mirel” is also completely bio-degradable…in every environment. This product doesn’t just reduce the overall waste of consumers (you can do home composting with their products too), but Mirel can also be used in industrial composting, septic systems, rivers, and oceans, and all types of soil. Translation? They’ll be cutting the amount of waste production per person if some of the “big boys” that make consumer products and foodstuffs catch on. Imagine if 1.3 billion people in Asia started using Metabolix’s biodegradable paper cups ( made from switchgrass). With increasing environmental regulations by the second, this doesn’t seem so outlandish anymore.
• Apparently the Target Corporation caught on. Yep, that’s right, your Target Gift Card…will now be made from fermented sugar. Metabolix is currently working with 50 other companies to develop more bio-degradable plastic products.
• Solid management team. In May, Metabolix got itself a new president, who, ironically, had been a staple on the petro-chemical scene at BP for years. The head honcho of Metabolix aside, supporting board members are stocked full of people from who used to run companies like Pepsi Co. and Frito-Lay. Scientists. Plastic geniuses. Even the economic advisor to the Commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration is on board. And, needless to say, with no shortage of financial gurus either, the company appears to be moving in the right direction.
• They make it easy to switch. Metabolix has made it so they’re products can be made on ANY type of plastic processing machine. So, those companies out there who are saying “going green” (in terms of plastic) “isn’t economically feasible right now” can kiss that excuse goodbye.