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Capitalizing on the biobased boom

USDA’s Certified Biobased label offers brand owners the opportunity to promote their biobased products and packaging in the new carbon-conscious environment.

Pw 42930 Bio Preferred

Our economy is slowly but surely heeding the signal that carbon is the new watchword. During the past few years, a steady stream of so-called “biobased” products have been making their way to retail shelves—compostable dinnerware made from corn, plant-based laundry detergents, and bamboo flooring among them. Coke and Pepsi are now competing to be first to market with a soft drink bottle derived entirely from sugarcane or other plant materials.

The emerging biobased economy even has its own label—USDA Certified Biobased. It’s part of a federal BioPreferred program designed to help grow “green” jobs, stimulate the rural economy, promote energy independence, and prompt a shift to renewable resources from petroleum, helping to manage the carbon cycle.

Launched in February 2011, the label needs a little introduction, since the term biobased, although familiar sounding, represents more than meets the eye. We advised the USDA on strategic marketing considerations related to the launch of the USDA Certified Biobased label. Here’s a primer—and why you need to be thinking about forming your own biobased strategy during 2012.

What is “biobased”? 

Ask a consumer what biobased means, and they might respond with somewhat erroneous definitions such as “natural,” “biodegradable,” or “renewable.” Consult Webster, and you’ll come up short. But the USDA (and federal law) defines it quite specifically as “commercial or industrial products, other than food or feed, that are composed in whole, or in significant part, of biological products or renewable agricultural materials (including plant, animal, and aquatic materials), or forestry materials”—hence the label, depicting the soil, sea, and sun.

More important than this definition is the program’s intention, which is to expand the market for alternatives to petroleum-based products by promoting new uses for agricultural commodities such as bioplastics, biofibers, and biobased chemicals. It thus excludes products such as office paper, cotton t-shirts, and wooden furniture introduced before 1972. (See BioPreferred.gov for more details.)

Both finished consumer and commercial products as well as intermediate products (e.g., platform chemicals, fibers, etc.) are currently eligible to earn the USDA Certified Biobased label. Standards for “complex” products (consisting of many components, such as automobiles) are being developed. Among the many products that have already earned the label are Procter & Gamble’s Gillette ProGuide Fusion razor package; Papermate mechanical pencils made from Mirel biodegradable plastic; the Greenware line of cold cups made from NatureWorks’ plant-based Ingeo polymer; and intermediates such as Lenzing’s TENCEL lyocell fiber made from eucalyptus and DuPont’s Sorona polymer. Seventh Generation is so bullish about the label that they have certified more than 60 of their household cleaning and personal care products—virtually their entire product lineup.

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