Guest writes: The following short film offers a basic overview of what our post-oil future will look like. Towards the Bio-based Economy shows how most products we use on a daily basis - from fuels, medicines, and Euro banknotes, to washing powder and plastics - can be made from biomass. For almost all petroleum-based products, a plant-based variant has already been found.
'Green chemistry' and the concept of the 'biorefinery' are the key words for this future: through biotechnology, any given stream of biomass can be taken apart and converted into a range of efficient, climate-neutral, biodegradable and renewable products.
The bio-based economy is founded on the idea of a closed loop, a green cycle, the cradle-to-cradle philosophy: instead of polluting our environment and depleting scarce resources, we will be producing plant-based products that are food and fertiliser for new crops.
Biopact