Bioscience company Metabolix (NASDAQ: MBLX) today announced a new joint venture with ADM (NYSE: ADM) to produce a new line of natural bio-based plastics that the companies say are completely biodegradable.

The new venture, called Telles, named after the Roman goddess of the Earth, plans to make and commercialize a new of family of plastics under the trade name Mirel™.

Produced from renewable resources like, but not limited to corn sugar, Mirel is to provide an alternative to traditional, oil-based plastics for use in products as diverse as cosmetics, food industry packaging and consumer goods, according to the company.

It will be intended for use as an alternative to petroleum-based plastic in a wide variety of processes, including injection molding, paper coating, cast film and sheet, blown film, and thermoforming.

Unlike conventional plastics, which are petroleum-based and don't decompose, Mirel will biodegrade harmlessly back to nature in a wide range of environments such as soil, compost, rivers, and oceans, Telles claims.

And it'll do so quickly, according to Telles chief brand officer Brian Igoe.

"It's usually a matter of months, depending on thickness and temperature. But a plastic bag, for instance, in 60 to 90 days, would be gone," Igoe told Cleantech.com today.

The technology is based on a process first pursued twenty years ago by Metabolix chief science officer Oliver Peoples and Anthony Sinsky. At the time, Peoples was a grad student working under Professor Sinsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The two discovered that naturally-ocurring microbes contained microscopic pieces of polymer, or plastic. They eventually managed to engineer microbes optimized for creating polymers.

"We can produce microbes that are, by dry weight, over 80% natural plastic. We ferment the microbes, like you'd fermet beer, feed it with corn as a feedstock, harvest it and then create these pellets which we can turn into products," said Metabolix' Igoe.

While using corn-based sugars today, given its partnership with corn giant ADM, the process is not limited to corn, Igoe claimed.

"We could use sugar cane in Brazil, palm oil in southeast Asia or coconut oil in India. Or even switchgrass here in America. We're the leading switchgrass bioscience company right now. Switchgrass is a promising feedstock for the future."

Telles is building a first commercial scale biorefinery in Clinton, Iowa. The plant is expected to start up in 2008 and produce Mirel at an annual rate of 110 million pounds.

The company doesn't plan to consume any petroleum-based product in its production; it intends to use corn stover for fuel and electricity, buying an additional 10% of the power it expects to need required from wind sources.

Telles expects that its customers will market their natural plastic products co-branded with the Mirel name and logo. "Consumers will now be able to pick out these products, recognizing the premium material, much like Gore-tex, Teflon or Intel have successfully done with their co-branding," said Igoe, optimistically.

More than 350 billion pounds of plastic is produced each year worldwide. Some 10 percent of the world's oil consumption goes towards making plastic.

Telles claims to be currently working with more than 40 prospective customers on more than 60 applications, including consumer products, packaging, single use disposables, and products used in agriculture and erosion control.

Telles' Mirel is to compete with a similar product introduced last October by Alcoa KAMA and Cereplast (see Cleantech.com's New starch-based plastic on the way from Alcoa and Cereplast.)