Take this watch, for example. It is made by Sprout Watches which offers a line of eco-friendly watches that contain corn resin and bamboo. The watches come in multiple colors, each with a different earth-themed design.

The corn resin is used as a component of the plastic, rather than using petroleum-based products. Sprout promotes the technology on its website and notes that corn resin pellets sequester far less fossil fuel and emits much less greenhouse gases. In addition, the watches are biodegradable and will not leach toxins into the ground. If you want to learn more, they have some neat graphics to demonstrate the process from stalk to watch.

Energy blogger Joanna Schroeder found the corn watch sometime last year and did a post about it recently on AgWired. Nice that the corn watch matches the corn jeans that she found a few years ago.

Add this to the list of products that can be made with corn – like skateboards, doggie waste bags, diapers, toilet paper, carpeting, trash cans, even phones! When we think about becoming less dependent on petroleum, we have to remember that petroleum is used to make plastics – and corn can replace that as well. It’s about time!

That’s what POET has been doing with patent-pending technology at six different ethanol plants that by the end of this year will have produced enough corn oil to make 12 million gallons of biodiesel.

POET has been selling its branded Voilà™ corn oil into biodiesel and feed markets since January, with POET’s plant in Hudson, South Dakota the first to produce it. The technology was installed in five additional POET plants this year, with more on the way in 2012. Plants that are producing corn oil today are POET Biorefining – Emmetsburg, Gowrie, Jewell and Hanlontown in Iowa. POET Biorefining in Laddonia, Missouri, will be the next to come online this month. The six plants’ combined capacity is about 100 million pounds of corn oil per year.

“Voilà has been a very strong part of POET’s business this year, and I’m excited to see more plants getting this technology,” POET founder and CEO Jeff Broin said. “The more we can diversify into new profitable products, the more successful our plants will be.”

Voilà is just one item on POET’s growing list of products created at its plants. In addition to ethanol, POET produces quality products for animal feed including Dakota Gold distillers dried grains. POET also captures carbon dioxide at seven of its plants for sale to beverage producers, and the company last year unveiled Inviz, a zein product used to replace petroleum-based films and coatings.

“This is pretty exciting. We’re producing energy as a by-product of energy,” Broin said. “It’s incredible to see how many different things we can get from a kernel of corn.”

It is incredible, indeed!

Watch a video produced by POET about Voilà below:

Sick is a good thing in skater lingo, by the way.

Last fall, Corn Board Manufacturing Inc. (CBMI) signed an agreement with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop and market CornBoard™ from a corn-based structural composite technology invented by the university’s Dr. Nancy Sottos, Dr. Scott White and Dr. Thomas Mackin. CornBoard™ is a version of wood composite board that uses corn husks and stalks, prepared by mixing the fibrous corn component with a polymer matrix, laminating the mixture, and applying heat and pressure.

Just a few months later, CBMI president Lane Segerstrom set a new world record for skateboard speed, averaging more than 78 mph on a towed Stalk It™ longboard, made from corn stover. Watch the video here:

The skateboards are just the first of the CornBoard products. The company is working on other applications in furniture, flooring, and building materials.

Totally gnarly, dude. (That’s a good thing too!)

Here, ingenuity and U.S. farming collide to meet demand rooted in an urban problem, cleaning up after Fido.  With the new bags, which programs such as the downtown St. Louis “Scoop the Poop” campaign are using, dog owners can rest assured knowing that they are keeping their city and their planet clean.

Farmers know how important caring for the land is.  So enjoy walking Rex and don’t forget that farmers provide the fuel for innovative ways to improve the way we treat the earth every day.

Aside from the fact that my driving abilities necessitate a safety-oriented automobile, I love my car for its heating abilities.  Manufacturers from climates more bitter than St. Louis this late March understand the need to keep passengers toasty and, as someone who wears a coat well into a seasonable June, my shaking limbs are grateful.

Until now, many alternative fuel vehicles haven’t focused as carefully on the delicate disposition of their desired drivers.  But when testing a car’s true drivability in Northern Sweden, the importance of reliable, continuous cabin heat becomes vastly apparent.  So like so many auto manufacturers looking for a fuel source that would provide an affordable, effective, sustainable alternative fuel source, Volvo found ethanol.

When my next Volvo arrives to provide me with welcome relief from the thuggish prices big oil extorts on a weekly basis, I can rest assured knowing that I will be able to snuggly tuck myself into a warm car for the trek to work every cold winter morning.  Knowing that the heat comes from American family farms makes me feel a little warmer inside too.

The FlameDisk® is the first ethanol product to be used exclusively for outdoor grilling, according to manufacturer Sologear, the Wisconsin-based company that invented the product. They market FlameDisk as “more eco-friendly than charcoal and lighter fluid because it features renewable ethanol. Ethanol is extremely clean burning and generates 90% fewer pollutants than charcoal. The FlameDisk®’s aluminum casing is also recyclable.”

Each FlameDisk utilizes one pint of locally produced corn ethanol. “We buy our ethanol from an ethanol manufacturer in 200 proof,” said Sologear president Chad Sorenson. “Then we convert it from a liquid into a solid with a special chemical process that we’ve developed. Nothing like this has ever been done to my knowledge.”

Sorenson says using ethanol for grilling purposes is just a small market compared to the transportation use of ethanol, “But it has a lot of significant potential with about 3.8 billion grilling occasions in the U.S. every year and we are already selling product overseas so we think over time this could be a significant new use of ethanol that may have not been considered prior to this.”

The recyclable packaging for the FlameDisk includes a corn emblem that Sorenson says signifies the product as corn-based and proclaims it’s eco-friendliness. “It assures consumers that this is a totally clean burning and safe fuel to use to cook your food,” he said. “Helping consumers that this is a natural fuel that comes from natural biomatter is useful.”

The FlameDisk is already on the market and available at a number of retail stores like Ace Hardware, Home Depot, and True Value with a suggested retail price of $4.99.

Listen to my interview with Chad here:

We actually tried out the product and found that it really works just like they say. Watch our FlameDisk demo here:

Next Step Biofuels has launched PowerPellets, a green fuel made from corn stover – all the leaves, cobs and stalks leftover after the corn is harvested – that burns like coal and will help with that state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard laws that require utilities to generate more of their power from renewable sources:

According to Next Step COO Russ Zeeck, PowerPellets solve the logistical and operational problems that have thus far prevented wide-scale use of biomass to generate electricity. “PowerPellets overcome the three major problems that utilities have had with biomass,” said Zeeck. “First, unlike raw biomass, PowerPellets are easy and affordable to ship and store. Second, unlike other pelletized biomass, PowerPellets are hard and friable which means they pulverize and feed just like coal; PowerPellets can be folded into a coal-fired plant’s operations with little or no additional capital. And, third, because Next Step makes PowerPellets from corn stover – America’s most abundant source of renewable biomass – there is a deep, reliable and price-stable supply.”

Next Step Biofuels says the PowerPellets were recently tested and found to do what was claimed of them during rigorous testing conducted at the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota. The company is negotiating with several utilities to supply PowerPellets starting next year.

That famous line from the 1967 film “The Graduate” can be applied to the great potential in plastics from agricultural products. A recent study from the European Bioplastics and the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence estimates that “up to 90% of total plastics consumed could be replaced by bio-based polymers.”

A company called Cereplast expects the U.S. bio-plastics market to top $10 billion in sales by 2020. The company makes renewable plastics using starches from tapioca, corn, wheat and potatoes and plans to launch a family of algae-based resin products. They believe the potential market is enormous, since petroleum is used in nearly every product we buy from toys and toothbrushes to contact lenses and electronics.

According to Cereplast CEO Frederic Scheer, “This study found that in 2007, only 0.3% of global plastic production was bio-based. By 2013 we expect that overall bio-plastics manufacturing capacity will increase by approximately seven times current levels, which still barely taps the surface. Demand is huge and will increase exponentially according to all the indicators we are watching.”

With companies like Coca-Cola and Walmart turning to more environmentally-conscious plastic packaging, Scheer believes that biodegradable resins “can compete with their petroleum counterparts and help break the world’s addiction to oil.”

Farmers can not only provide food, feed, fiber, and fuel – but the bags and containers to carry it in!

Look at this – a dino made out of cornstarch-based building blocks colored with food dye that can dissolve in water. Amaizing! The product is EnviroBLOX™ by Cadaco Toys.

According to the company website, they are a safe and fun construction toy. No glue or magnet needed, simply moisten the blocks with a sponge and they stick together like magic. Create all kinds of fun designs; the opportunities are endless. Each set contains a book of suggested building designs. Best of all EnviroBLOX contain the following benefits to the customer:

- EnviroBLOX dissolve in running water like ice – no need to throw in the trash.

Is that cool or what?!

Farmers today are becoming more and more efficient and finding ways to better utilize our natural resources including the ones they grow.