(Opening music)
Brown: We did the math and estimated that, conservatively,
we've used more than 100 billion soybeans
in the creation of our vehicles.
That's 62 million pounds of beans.
(Music)
Scientist: Three, two, one
(BLAST and impact noises)
Clausen: Here at the Forest Products Laboratory
in Madison, Wisconsin,
we're a lab of 168 scientists that do research on
innovative technologies to develop more efficient ways
to use our nation's forest resources.
(Wood beam SNAPS)
Stoner: Support from the USDA was absolutely critical
for us to demonstrate that black raspberries
had preventative effect s on cancer of the oral cavity,
of the esophagus and also of the human colon.
Cortright: The work that we're doing here at Virent,
that I'm very excited about, is taking materials
that are grown on the land, and being able to generate
the same fuels and chemicals that, today,
we're doing from crude oil.
(New music)
Clausen: Our National Forests are one of
our greatest treasures.
They're also one of our greatest
and most sustainable natural resources.
We have a great deal of woody biomass on
the forest floor. A lot of the research that's done
at the Forest Products Lab is looking at
ways to use the forest thinnings and woody biomass
to help reduce that catastrophic wildfire risk.
We're also working on nanotechnology.
We're looking at wood and what it can be used for
at the nano scale. We don't even understand
all the different types of things that chemicals can do
at the nano scale. There's going to be many,
many innovations that come out of this research,
not only in the field of forest products
but in other fields as well.
Brown: Through our use of Soy Foam, we are able
to reduce our petroleum usage by five million pounds
annually, and our CO2 emissions by 20 million pounds.
And we're not stopping there.
Stoner: For the last twenty five years or so
I've been in a field called "chemo prevention,"
or prevention of cancer with the use of dietary or
synthetic compounds. Much of our work in the last twenty years
has focused on a food-based approach to cancer prevention,
utilizing freeze-dried black raspberries.
Many Americans are taking a hard look at foods
as a way to prevent disease.
This, I think, could be very good news for farmers,
as well as the public.
The demand for black raspberries
has increased substantially.
But there are a lot of foods out there that haven't
been looked at yet that I'm convinced have
cancer preventative substances in them.
What we've done with berries and cancer is just
an example of what can be done with many other kinds of foods.
Cortright: Virent Energy System has been developing technology,
where we found that we could convert biomass to chemicals.
And one of the chemicals that we can generate is
the chemical that you would need to make
a plastic that you would find in water bottles.
This bottle here has 30 percent
biomass-derived content.
We are able, with our process, to do the other 70 percent.
We have a partnership with the USDA,
where they funded work early on in the company,
where we got fundamental knowledge that we utilize today.
So, Coca Cola is interested in taking the components
that we can use, from our process, and be able to derive
a bottle that would be 100 percent biobased.
With our process, once deployed, will be helpful
for rural development, and energy security,
as well as being able to generate products that are good,
be good for the earth.
(Closing Music)