Medicine. Plastic. Clothing. Petroleum-based chemicals comprise every single one of these products.
But they didn’t used to. Before our more recent big petro-addiction, many of these products were made with bio-based chemicals.
Now, thanks to unpredictable gas prices, declining petro-based resources and a growing green revolution, manufacturers like the East Lansing-based biotech company,
Working Bugs, are looking for new old ways to make these products without the help of an oil tanker.
Working Bugs specializes in using the fermentation process to create chemicals that larger companies, manufacturers and the government purchase and use to create new bio-based products.
Many of Working Bugs’ contracts and processes are confidential. But the company’s president and founder, Dianne Holman, took a few minutes to talk to Capital Gains about biotechnology’s pending impact on the economy and the environment.
Capital Gains: What made you decide to start a biobased company that specializes in fermentation?Dianne Holman: I worked with the
Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for 15 years as an engineer with water resources. I decided to try the private sector because I wanted to see what I could do to get Michigan’s manufacturing sector going again. I was also ready to be on the creative side of science.
I’m also very interested in green chemistry and going back to more natural products, as opposed to using highly engineered or petroleum-based products.
We’re using a lot of practices that were practiced in biology process several decades ago that got pushed aside when the petroleum industry and petrochemicals became more mainstream and more economical.
Now, biological processes for manufacturing and chemical production are more desirable and more economically possible. That idea has always appealed to me.
CG: Can you explain how the process works?DH: We’re a fermentation company that works on fermentation contracts for energy and fuel-related products. This could involve pharmaceuticals or other types of bio-chemical—we use chemicals in all aspects of our lives. There’s just so many areas we can go into now and develop bio-chemical products as opposed to petrochemicals.
Fermentation means that you use microorganisms like bacteria and yeasts. They produce chemicals if they’re fed the right nutrients and sugars.
So, you take an agricultural project like sugar, sucrose, glucose or straight sugars like sugar beets and potatoes—we have to get these different agricultural products and sugars into a form that’s usable by the microorganisms.
Then we have the fermentation tanks where we use the microorganisms and the sugars to get the microorganisms to produce the bio-chemicals. Then we have a process to separate them out.
Our goal is to go out and develop more platforms and have a wide range of agriculture projects that we can use for extracting sugars and a wide range of microorganisms that we’re familiar with.
In terms of development, we’re really trying to find the conditions that are best for each microorganism. What are their temperatures? What type of nutrients do they need? Do they need oxygen or no oxygen? We’re starting small, but we’re growing.
CG: What household item currently on the market uses this technology? DH: Part of what people see the most is green cleaning products. You will also see products that go into bio-based plastics. Healthcare products have a lot more natural, bio-based ingredients.
Really, everything that’s made now a days was made from petrochemicals. Fifteen to 20 percent of petroleum is used for materials and chemicals. The rest is used for fuels. That’s a huge chunk of petroleum usage. If you convert that to bio-products and biomaterials, that’s a big reduction in petroleum demand, so we’re working on that sector.
There are so many companies—not just our company—that are going into this that, over time, it will be all bio-based materials and bio-based ingredients. I think it’s going to hit everything we do.
CG: What kind of impact will that have on the state’s economy?DH: This is a developing industry. I know that the state and the economic development agencies are really pushing for this sector’s development. You see this in other states, but I think Michigan’s getting in on the front end of it.
When the governor talks about the bio-economy, this
is the bio-economy. It’s moving this way and the state is giving a lot of incentives to these companies. We used one incentive and will look for more in the future.
It’s really hard getting a whole new industry going, because there’s a whole lot of uncertainly about it. Some people—banks and insurance companies—just don’t understand it, and they think it’s risky or it doesn’t fit their business model, so it’s an uphill battle to get into the bio-economy.
CG: How can area leaders make it easier for biotech companies to get off the ground?DH: Well, there are some other biotech companies in town, like
Neogen. We can say to them, “What did you do for banking? What did you do for insurance?” That helped us find service companies—insurance, banking, accounting—that said, “Oh yeah, we know what you need.”
They understood that, with these new processes, we weren’t going to kill and blow everybody up. We had to get to the right point with people in the support business, to get them to understand so they weren’t afraid to work with us.
I think it would be helpful if there were a way new companies could get information from other bio-economy companies.
CG: Will the national economy having a negative impact on the bio-industry?DH: I don’t think so. I think the reason we’re having economic difficulties is because we’re stuck in old ways of doing things. I think the whole bio-economy and biotechnology is one way to break out of our old ways and stimulate the economy.
There are a lot of opportunities for small businesses in biotechnology and I think small businesses are going to pull us out of all of this.
CG: You have a Working Bugs affiliate in Sweden. What’s the value of having a global presence?DH: Sweden is a lot further along in bio-fuels and bio-refineries and bio-chemicals, so there’s a lot they can bring to us. Working together will strengthen us and there will be new markets for both. It’s a good relationship of sharing ideas and learning from each other. We see in the future that they will do one aspect and we will do another aspect of biotechnology development.
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Ivy Hughes is the managing editor of Capital Gains.
Dianne Holman is the president and founder of Working Bugs, LLC, based in East Lansing. The firm has a partnership with
Michigan Brewing Company in Webberville, MI, and an affiliate, Working Bugs, AB, in Sweden. Though the Swedish component works on different processes, Holman says the two companies will probably start collaborating on more projects in the future.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Dianne Holman and Working Bugs employee Eric Romein
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie