Our Better Nature: Plastic from Plants

In science class we were told crude oil comes from ancient algae and plankton that got pressure-cooked a really long time. I took notes, and I bet anyone who’s a patient sort could do it at home:

1. Let marine organisms die and pile up on the ocean floor for a few hundred million years.
2. Cover these with sediment (clay, silt, or sand, per your taste) up to 20,000 feet deep.
3. Go knit sweaters or play Sudoku for 65 million years while the organic matter is cooked by heat from the Earth’s core, turns to oil, and rises up drop by drop until it’s trapped under impermeable layers.
4. To check if the oil is ready, insert a drill bit 6,000 to 15,000 feet down into the Earth’s crust.

(Warning: I was a lousy note-taker, so be careful.)

Although there are still an estimated 1.6 to 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable crude oil left in the ground, at the pace we’re using it, this equates to about 50 years’ worth of oil. On the bright side, oil is still being formed by the same planetary processes that gave us our current supply. The downside is that it’s happening at a rate of just a few thousand barrels per day. Given that we all have some kind of vegetable oil on our kitchen shelves, it’s clear we can turn organic matter into oil in somewhat less than a million years. While plant-based fuels can take us partway down the road to energy independence, new research says plants could free up a great deal of oil that is being used in other applications.

We know veggie-based fuels work. Although large-scale biodiesel production didn’t take off until the 1980s, Rudolf Diesel, the guy who invented the diesel engine, demonstrated one of his engines running on peanut oil at the 1900 World Exposition in Paris. Corn-based ethanol for gas engines has a long history as well. Henry Ford designed his 1908 Model T to run on the stuff, and the U.S. military produced corn ethanol during World War II to address fuel shortages.

There are a number of reasons that biofuels can’t replace fossil fuels. One roadblock is that biofuels cost between 75 and 130 percent more to produce than petroleum fuels. Consumers don’t see this reflected at the pump, though, because U.S. taxpayers shell out $6 billion per year to subsidize the biofuel industry. Also, we don’t have enough land. Corn-based ethanol, which makes up 10 percent of our gasoline supply, eats almost half our annual corn crop, and while biodiesel accounts for 3 percent of our diesel budget, it guzzles over 40 percent of the soybean oil we make.

Plants may not be able to solve our fuel problem, but crude oil has other applications in addition to powering internal combustion engines. Petroleum is a crucial input to many fertilizers, medications, and synthetic fabrics. Plastics manufacturing is an especially oil-hungry sector, currently hogging about eight percent of the world’s oil production, a figure that is projected to rise to 20 percent by 2050.

But what if we could make plastic from plants instead of oil? Indeed, plant-based plastics are nothing new: The ancient Maya vulcanized rubber-tree sap to make rubber rain gear, water vessels, and more; cellulose plastic was discovered in 1838; and Henry Ford created a soy-based plastic car body in 1941. Unfortunately, today’s bioplastics, made largely from corn or sugar cane, have serious drawbacks. Aside from the fact that they divert food crops, they are more fragile than oil-based plastics and cost more to produce. They also can’t be recycled due to their high toxin content. Hardly a panacea.

Fortunately, it looks like cost-effective, superior-quality plastics made from non-food crops are in the pipeline. Just in the last year, scientists have found ways to make high-strength, fully biodegradable plastics at a competitive price from two unlikely plants. The first study, published in October 2025, identified ways to turn bamboo into plastic that researchers say is on par or slightly better than oil-based plastic like ABS (hard, molded plastic used in toys, car parts, and 3-D printing) in terms of strength and thermal stability. They also claim bamboo plastic costs about the same to produce as conventional plastic.

Although the research team was based in China, bamboo production is not limited to Asia. We actually have three native bamboo species found in the southeast U.S., and there are bamboo species that can grow in almost every state, and on a wide range of soil types, including marginal soils not well-suited to food crops. Bamboo represents a possible income source for many U.S. farmers if demand for bamboo plastic takes off.

In the second study, published in April 2026, researchers from the University of Connecticut devised a way to make plastic from hemp, a crop historically grown for the long, strong fibers in its stems that can be woven into cloth and cordage. Like bamboo-based plastics, hemp plastic is said to be extremely strong and stable at high temperatures, but hemp could also be made into clear plastic used in packaging.

While not native to North America, hemp was first planted here in the early 1600s, when it was needed for sails, ropes, and rigging on ships. It was again in high demand during both World Wars. Hemp is a type of cannabis, like marijuana, but with a negligible THC content (marijuana’s active ingredient). Today it is mainly grown as a source of CBD oil, which is used medicinally to treat joint pain, insomnia, and other conditions.

If bamboo and hemp — two crops that are easy to grow, even on less-than-ideal farmland — can replace some of the current eight percent of the word’s crude oil now going into plastics, I’d say that’s better than waiting millions of years for more oil.