There has been a resurgence of the “food vs fuel” or “food vs biofuel” debate recently (1-2 years).
It had been quiet for some time, but now it’s coming back big time.
Additionally, there’s even a new kid on the block that nobody had written about it until recently … the “food vs plastics” or “food vs bioplastics” debate.
Food vs Fuel
Basically, the “food vs fuel” story goes as follow:
- Crops
The biofuel industry needs crops to produce biofuel.
The biofuel industry has been accused of taking away food crops to produce biofuel.
This had led to a reduction of available food crops for the food industry and a price increase of food crops.
How bigger the biofuel industry, how more (food) crops they will need and this will reduce the availability of food crops for the population.
- Farmland
Another aspect of this debate, is that the production of crops for the biofuel industry is taking away farmlands that would have normally been used for the production of food crops.
The biofuel industry uses farmland to grow food or non-food crops as they need feedstock to produce biofuels and this will compete with the farmland needed to grow food crops for the food industry.
Food vs BioPlastic
But now, there’s something new … the food vs bioplastics debate.
I had never heard or read about it until recently.
The bioplastics industry is inheriting the same accusations made at the biofuel industry.
But where does this come from?
Well, it’s easy.
Since a couple of years, many bioplastic companies have been….
- publishing content
- making comments
- advertising
- organising joint events (bioplastics and biofuels)
…. with biofuels related media and organisations.
I’ve said and written about this a few years ago: the bioplastics industry will commit a cardinal mistake by being associated with the biofuel industry. The bioplastic industry had to avoid this at any cost.
The overall population wasn’t aware that biofuels were connected with bioplastics …. and it would have been clever to keep it that way.
The bioplastic industry ignored my advise and in the contrary they’ve dived “full speed” in the pool with their clothes on.
It’s “literally” the worse mistake the bioplastic industry could have done.
Now, they’ve opened the box of Pandora …. good luck with that!
The world has changed and so has the way we communicate on the web.
Strategy … Strategy … Strategy