DURANGO, Colo. - Five hundred years or five days? Scientists speculate that a Styrofoam container will remain in a landfill for at least a half millennium before it begins to biodegrade.

A new product line, however, developed and now launching its pilot sales effort from Durango, can be composted after use, and it’s back to dirt in four to six days.

“This is absolutely the, or one of the, only cradle-to-cradle cycle (products),” said entrepreneur Giles Instone, of the designated LCA or Lifecycle Assessment where the end of life disposal step is a recycling process. “It’s grown, we use it, toss it away and it goes back in the ground as compost.”

The company, New Ice, Inc., has combined industrial starches and cellulose in a patented formula to make shapes (like the trays pictured) to replace Styrofoam. The compostable products are beginning to make their way into the Durango market, perhaps to be most widely viewed at the up-coming Taste of Durango. Participating restaurants will be serving their “tastes” on the starch-cellulose product, the food serving area of which is covered with a compostable wax.

“These are absolutely ideal for food that has been cooked and is going to be served either in a chain restaurant or cafeteria,” said Instone. “The tray keeps food hotter longer than a paper tray and is second only to Styrofoam in terms of its insulation properties, plus we do disappear after we’ve done our job and Styrofoam doesn’t. It’s the biggest single filler of landfills in the world.”

The pilot program for a second tray, designed for food packaging, will also soon be launched. Instead of the compostable wax, these trays feature a compostable film that withstands the moisture in meats, fruits and vegetables.

Cups are also on the horizon. With demand already existing in the national marketplace for a compostable cold cup, New Ice is moving forward quickly to perfect that specific manufacturing process. A hot beverage cup will follow the cold cup.

The New Ice compostable products have been some five years in research and development. Instone first stumbled on the idea while attending a food exhibition in Germany.

“A company was trying to sell a product not dis-similar from this, but it was a cottage company and not scalable,” said Instone referencing the mass production that New Ice is poised to launch. “But it did work, and so I got the idea for combining different starches in a different way to make a material that could be used on bigger, better, faster machines, and sufficiently different from what they were doing.”

Instone had worked previously with environmentalist Dr. Joe Bowden on product development (including the cooling blanket, from which New Ice derives its name, designed to keep raw meat colder in trans-Pacific flights), so it was a natural for them to explore the new technology. In a small laboratory in Durango’s Bodo Industrial Park the experiments began.

“We had a number of false starts where we had starches that did combine, but made a product that was too brittle,” said Instone, describing the original attempts as crumbling like a cookie. “Eventually we came up with something that was flexible enough and strong enough at the same time to be usable as a replacement for Styrofoam – not just in the food service industry, though that is where we are starting, but we have our eyes on the different types of packaging this could be used for, i.e. electronics.”

The New Ice, Inc. pilot production plant iis located n the Durango Tech Center.

After outgrowing the Bodo laboratory, Instone purchased the old NA Charters headquarters in the Durango Tech Center. The spacious bus ports allow for set up of the prototype manufacturing machinery, created by German engineers and brought to Durango. Refinement will continue and large New Ice production facilities will eventually be established in central hubs throughout the U.S. and Europe. Instone cited Northern Kentucky/Southern Ohio as the region for the first large-scale U.S. manufacturing plant.

“The pilot plant here with the production machine can produce these in pretty big quantities,” said Instone of the 5,000 trays per hour production time. “We’ll change the molds and experiment with different shapes here before we push those sorts of production models into the other factories.”

Limited test marketing has been done in the Denver area with several “very big” companies, according to Instone, plus trays were put to the test in the machinery found in large commercial packaging plants.

The public roll-out is, however, in Durango. Beyond working with the Colorado Restaurant Association at Taste of Durango, the New Ice team has approached Fort Lewis College. Sample trays are being used in the cafeteria, and the FLC Environmental Center is confirming the products’ compostable qualities.

According to Instone, once the product is broken it begins composting. Utilizing a shredder accelerates the process, though even if the products aren’t shredded, they biodegrade well within the 180 day requirement to be labeled compostable. Instone has even crumbled up a tray or two and tossed the pieces out for the birds to consume – which they did. In water the products break down quickly, and the potato starches become fish food.

“This is a brand new product,” said Instone, who is originally from England and moved the New Ice parent company, The Instone Group, to Durango some 12 years ago. “As it matures, it’s going to get better, and hopefully be cheaper, but it’s a first step.”

At this juncture the New Ice trays cost about two to four cents per unit more than Styrofoam equivalents, depending on the quality of the Styrofoam. As oil prices continue to rise, however, the gap between the Styrofoam and New Ice is closing, with New Ice conceivably to become competitive and much more attractive to large scale purchasers.

“More and more people are making a conscious decision to get away from Styrofoam and plastic,” said Instone. “This is a premium product for a premium market. We’re not trying to compete with Styrofoam, except that we’re trying to eliminate it.”

New Ice appears to have no equal in the world, and indeed Instone has secured patents in the U.S. and Europe, as well as throughout Asia – including China – to protect the intellectual property.

Other than paper products (the production of which carries its own environmental impact), the most publicized biodegradable plates and cups currently on the market are bagasse, which is the fiber waste of the sugar cane following the juice extraction. Distributors promote that it biodegrades in 30 to 40 days. According to Instone, it is being produced in “huge” quantities in China.

“A lot of people are anti using it for all sorts of reasons,” he said, reminding that the transport from China requires a great deal of fuel. “Two, they’re never quite sure about how it’s produced, or whether there are contaminants in it. And it doesn’t keep food as hot or cold as well as these trays.”

The New Ice products are merely powdered potato starches and some cellulose for binding. The only byproduct of the manufacturing process is steam.

“We bought a little composter for our facility just to start testing the stuff ourselves,” said Instone. “I thought it might be smelly, but you put the stuff in and it’s gone in four days. Gone. I still can’t believe we invented it.”

Further information is available on the New Ice web site, www.newiceinc.com, though the site will be undergoing expansion in coming months. To learn more or place an order, contact the company at 970.382.0002 or info@newiceinc.com.

indiana@durangodowntown.com

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