A new kind of food container has hit Eugene: the ‘corntainer,’ a plastic-like container that is completely biodegradable.
A Portland Wild Oats Natural Marketplace was the first store in the nation to offer NatureWorks PLA, a commercially viable polymer derived completely from renewable resources. After the success in the Portland store, the corntainer moved to all of the Wild Oats stores in the Northwest, according to Mark Cockcroft, Wild Oats Western regional marketing manager.
The corntainer has “worked beautifully,” Cockcroft said. “Customers have loved it, and the staff has been really excited.”
According to a Wild Oats press release, the process of creating the corntainer generates 15 to 60 percent fewer greenhouse gases than the petroleum-based material it replaces.
Kurt Luttecke, the Natures/Wild Oats area director of operations, said in a statement that NatureWorks was a giant step in continuing efforts to seek the cleanest, freshest and most environmentally sound products and procedures that contribute to the health and well-being of Wild Oats customers and employees.
“Not only are these new containers 100 percent natural,” he said, but “they’re as functional or better than the plastic tubs the industry uses as far as strength, clarity and sealing in the flavor and aroma of our deli products.”
University senior Carrie Sabin, a Wild Oats customer, said she has always tried to be environmentally conscious, but has never come across anything like NatureWorks.
“I love that I can use the container and then just throw it in my compost pile,” Sabin said.
However, not everyone has their own compost pile. For that reason, Wild Oats has decided to put its own compost bins inside the stores where people can compost their corntainers.
According to Cockcroft, corntainers put in bins at the store are then used in the compost fertilizer that Wild Oats sells to the general public.
“We’re taking something from the ground, using it, and then putting it back into the ground,” Cockcroft said. “Now customers can use compost that they helped to create.”
A national survey by Roper Starch Worldwide Audits and Surveys market research found that 51 percent of people surveyed said they would be willing to pay up to a 10 percent premium for an environmentally safer version of plastic packaging. However, Cockcroft said Wild Oats paid the additional money to bring corntainers to the general public at no additional cost.
Wild Oats “felt strongly enough that we were willing to make the investment ourselves and not pass that additional cost onto the consumer,” he said. “It was the right thing to do.”
Sabin said that she was one of those consumers that would have been willing to pay the additional money, but she was grateful she didn’t have to.
The NatureWorks technology produces renewable resin by tapping into the carbon stored in plant starches and breaking them down into natural plant sugars. Through a process of fermentation and separation, the carbon and other elements of the sugars are used to make the corntainer — a process that uses 20 to 50 percent fewer fossil fuels than petroleum-based plastics.
NatureWorks Communications Director Michael O’Brien said in a statement that retailers in the United States are in the early logistical stages of offering sustainable packaging to consumers.
Wild Oats is “on the leading edge of what we believe will be a standard application in grocery and deli,” he said. “It won’t be too long before you’ll be hearing ‘paper, plastic or NatureWorks’ at the checkout stand.”