Transcript: The Business of Bioplastics

DAVID POGUE Ford is already replacing 10 percent of that petroleum-based plastic with stuff that's much easier to digest: food.

I look at this and I don't say to myself "car seat." How, how does something like this get to be plastic?

DEBORAH F. MIELEWSKI We take the soybeans and we press them, and you get soybean oil.

DAVID POGUE So, instead of using hard-to-decompose petroleum-based plastic, Ford is substituting soy and other vegetable oils to make bioplastic.

Fifty grams, all right.

PATRICIA C. TIBBENHAM Going to mix it for 30 seconds.

DAVID POGUE And after we're done with this can I have a blueberry smoothie?

Other than the ingredients, there's not much difference in the process.

Oh, my god. Everybody clear the building! It's going to blow! The soy foam is taking over!

Ford is using bioplastic not only in soft foam seats, but also for hard plastic surfaces like the dashboard. And they're making other car parts from stuff that's left over from harvesting wheat.

Eighty percent of all plastic car parts are made using an injection mold process. The difference here is the wheat.

It seems like a scene from Willy Wonka. Whahahaha!

The machine takes a wheat-straw-plastic mixture, melts it, and pushes it into a mold. The mold cools and pops out a plastic part.

So we've gone from this to this, in 400 easy steps.

This is just a test strip, but this bin for the Ford Flex is made of wheat grass. It decomposes, it's carbon-neutral, and it's already saving tons of petroleum a year.

DEBORAH F. MIELEWSKI Even this small part on only the Flex conserves about 30,000 pounds of petroleum each and every year.