THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Monday, February 6, 1995               TAG: 9502030034
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   55 lines

RESEARCHERS HAVE DEVELOPED PLANT-GROWN PLASTIC THIS MIGHT BE BIG

Our legs have been pulled before.

People in their 40s or older remember being told that atomic energy would make electricity too cheap to bother to measure with meters. Over the decades, a thousand cancer cures have been found.

Now we learn from an article by reliable science reporter James Schultz that researchers are producing plastic from genetically altered plants. After decades of making plants out of plastic, the tables are turned.

Plant-grown plastic, also called natural plastic, sounds too bizarre and too good to be true.

Current plastic, which is refined from oil, costs 40 cents a pound. Plant-grown plastic might be 10 times cheaper, and farmers, not oil sheiks, would prosper. In fact, natural plastic could reduce our dependence on oil by 3 billion barrels a year - an astronomical amount. Our trade deficit would shrink.

The new term ``natural plastic'' sounds oxymoronic, given that plastic seems like the least natural product on the planet. While the feel of good wood or cotton satisfies and soothes, no one strokes plastic for tactile pleasure. Say ``artificial'' and almost the first word that springs to mind is ``plastic.'' In the hippie late '60s and early '70s, a person considered phony or shallow was called ``plastic.'' Few if any odes have been written to plastic, though plant-grown plastic could inspire a poem or two: ``Oh shiny fields of plastic washed by rain,'' and so on.

A major drawback to current oil-based plastic is that it takes an unnaturally long time to decompose: a century or two in landfills. The natural plastic, however, will dissolve in dirt or water within a few years.

Virginians can take special pride in natural plastic because a James Madison University biology professor, Douglas Dennis, conducted the original research and donated the bacterial genes that enabled Carnegie Institution's Department of Plant Biology in California to discover a way to produce commercially significant amounts of plastic from plants. (Another reason strong state universities matter.)

Monsanto, a multibillion-dollar food, agriculture, chemical and pharmaceutical firm, is looking into ways to commercialize plant-grown plastics, so there should be ample money invested in the new product.

Still, it is difficult to imagine a plastic toy with a sticker that says: ALL NATURAL FIBERS. Could it be that pink plastic lawn flamingoes will become hip? Will L.L. Bean sell natural-plastic products?

It is all so amazing, even revolutionary. We can see a day when agricultural surpluses prompt the federal government to pay farmers not to grow plastic. by CNB