Water-Based Polymers Make It Easier to Go Green
There has been a growing commercial emphasis in recent years to “go green.” At Chemstar we kind of chuckle at this notion, as we’ve been the original “green company” long before green became a marketing buzzword.
It’s not that we specifically set out to be “green.” Mother Nature did the majority of the work for us. The natural starches we scientifically modify are naturally-biodegradable agricultural products that provide advantages for our operations, our customers’ products and the environment. This also means we don’t have to figure out a way to cleverly “position” our products as green.
Production Advantages of Water-Based Polymers
We start with native starch as our base material and modify it in a water-based slurry. These modifications then go through a drying and milling phase before being sent to packaging. Essentially the only emission we create is water in a vapor or liquid form, making our polymers very environmentally friendly to produce.
Biodegradable Properties Make Our Customers’ Products More Green
The biodegradable properties of our functional, water-based starch polymers provide environmentally-friendly advantages for our customers. We can modify our starches to control the time it takes for them to biodegrade, whether that’s days or weeks. Synthetic polymers may be damaging to the producing formation.
In the systems our products are added to – take construction products for example – it’s better for a company’s green efforts to formulate away from synthetic polymers and move to starch for adhesion properties. These end-use systems are water-based, so as the product dries after application water is evaporating, not solvents.
For oil and natural gas drilling and exploration – our starch solutions are better for the environment than oil-based drilling fluids. During drilling operations that use water-based drill-in fluids, the polymers are all biodegradable meaning the water can be treated, cleaned and returned back to fields or treatment ponds. With oil-based drill-in fluids the cuttings that are left behind must be incinerated. And there will always be a certain amount of oil residue that is spilled.
These are just a few examples of our environmentally-friendly products in action. If your company is looking to enhance its environmental stewardship, we’d be happy to discuss how our biodegradable products can help achieve your green goals.
-Jim Werler
President