14 DAY TRIAL // It is very hard to please the consumers of the toy market, especially recently, given all the fuss about the plastic health hazard, but also because generally toys are always prone to being swallowed, easily broken, sucked on, bitten (by fragile, milk teeth), smashed on hard surfaces or, perhaps the worst of all things, every once in a while, they are forgotten outside, in the night rain. A new material is able to cope with all that, while being safe, as it does not emit any health-threatening substance.
The bio-plastic material in question is called ARBOFORM®, or liquid wood in its larger acceptance, and comes from Germany. It has been developed by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Pfinztal, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer subsidiary TECNARO GmbH, from totally renewable raw material which is not petroleum-dependent. Emilia Regina Inone-Kauffmann, the team leader from the ICT, gave more details on its exact composition in a press release.
"The cellulose industry separates wood into its three main components – lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose. The lignin is not needed in paper making, however. Our colleagues at TECNARO mix lignin with fine natural fibers made of wood, hemp or flax and natural additives such as wax. From this, they produce plastic granulate that can be melted and injection-molded." But in this stage, lignin was not suitable for the purpose; thus, it had to be separated from the cell fibers with the help of sulfurous substances, which were subsequently almost entirely removed as well.
But the reduced content of sulfur makes the material become soluble; thus, the specialists modified the material so that the toys made of it would not dissolve in water or when babies chewed on them. Then, researchers wanted to know whether it was fit for recycling purposes. "To find that out, we produced components, broke them up into small pieces, and re-processed the broken pieces – ten times in all. We did not detect any change in the material properties of the low-sulfur bio-plastic, so that means it can be recycled," explained Inone-Kauffmann.