Green Chemistry: plants for replacing oil?

Directed by

Christophe Renon

Written by

David Zavaglia

Produced by

France Télévisions, FTD, MFP / Diff : France 3

Magazine, France, 2010, 25 min

Oil is not only used for our transportation. It is also at the origin of many daily products, especially plastics and most motors oil and lubricants. However, in a few decades, there won’t be any oil, it’s now a certainty. Sabine and Jamy decide to go ans meet some chemists how developed equivalent of products stemming from oil but using plants as raw material.

How to create plastic from hydrocarbon? What is starch and how is it used by chemists? Can we replace polymers stemming from hydrocarbons by plant polymers? Do bioplastics and vegetable oil allow us to reduce our carbon emissions?

Jamy will answer to all these questions, while Sabine will go successively to Europe's biggest starch-work, in a glucose factory, in a bioplastic bag factory and finally to a field of rape, used to produce biofuel, among others.

Debate with :

• Jamy Gourmaud, journalist, host of C'est pas sorcier
• Fabien Descamps, scientific mediator and environmental education