Every year in the Spanish town of Buñol, a bunch of people gather together to chuck tomatoes at one another during a festival known, appropriately, as "La Tomatina." Besides representing a wasted opportunity for folks to get their daily dose of lycopene, the event roughly previews a similar barrage Ford and Heinz are planning for the automotive industry, a barrage of tomato-derived bioplastics for minor fittings in cars. Yep, it's like La Tomatina, but for, uh, engineers.
Now, we don't want to lead your mind completely tomato-astray, so we should point out that Ford's only interested, at this point, in the tomato skins, which it says can be formed into knickknacks such as coin holders and wiring clips. Where exactly will Ford find the necessary tons of tomato peels? Heinz! Everyone's favorite condiment-maker, which just so happens to produce a heap of tomato byproducts like skins, seeds, and stems after rifling through more than two million tons of the fruit annually. Tomatoes apparently make great, 100-percent-plant-based widgets for cars.
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Should the bioplastic make Ford's cut—it's still in the experimental phase—it will join the eight other bio-materials currently fitted to a range of Ford vehicles, a plant portfolio that includes sexy stuff like soy-based seat foam and rice hull–filled electrical cowl brackets, whatever those are. We dig the project, and not just because we're imagining a bunch of Ford and Heinz engineers settling development disagreements with giant tomato fights. In all seriousness, it seems logical to recycle an otherwise not terribly useful food byproduct for use in cars, which aren't terribly sustainable things to build in the first place.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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