Italics mine.
The Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory is poised to become the country’s leading producer of forest-based nanomaterials with the opening of a $1.7 million nanocellulose pilot plant. The facility will support an emerging market for new wood-derived renewable materials that will create jobs and contribute billions of dollars to the economy.
As new products are developed and commercialized, fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced, manufacturing in rural areas will increase, and many new high-paying jobs will be created. FPL’s new facility will aid in the commercialization of these materials by providing researchers and early adopters of the technology with working quantities of forest-based nanomaterials.
Tidwell said the plants technology will take woody material that needs to be removed from forests and develop it into a biomaterial that is commercially viable. He said the products created in the plant have the potential to replace currently-used plastics.
Vilsack said the plant represents and innovative way to create and export products that haven’t been created before.
“This is all designed to reformulate the American economy to an economy that is based on what we make rather than what we consume,” Vilsack said.
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Seems like a good idea.. take something not needed in the woods, make it commercially viable and replace something that uses more fossil fuels..? No?