DuPont CEO Charles Holliday has seen the future of the environment and it's . . . plastic. Not petrochemical-based plastic, mind you, but a corn-based version. DuPont is hardly without environmental sin (for example, it recently settled with the EPA over use of toxic chemicals in the production of Teflon), but the company has reduced its greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 65% since 1990, saving more than $2 billion in the process. Even Greenpeace told us DuPont has "raised the bar for the rest of corporate America." Now comes Sorona, which Holliday calls the "next nylon." By early 2007, Sorona will leave the test phase and, thanks to a biotech corn derivative known as "bio-PDO," use 40% less oil than old-school nylon. Sorona can already be turned into anything from underwear to carpeting; by 2016 it could be everywhere from cosmetics to Kevlar.
--Mark Borden
