It has been happening under the radar, but soybeans have been moving out of the kitchen and into a number of home and industrial applications.  Action by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) October makes it almost official.

SOYBEANS WILL SAVE THE WORLD!

Ok, not quite, but it is exciting to see plant based products getting so much attention, especially official attention.

In October the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published for comment new rules that would give preference in federal procurement to nine soy-based products.  Many of these are products were historically manufactured almost exclusively from petroleum or petroleum byproducts.  The nine categories covered by the proposed rules are chain/cable lubricants, gear lubricants, forming lubricants, general purpose household and industrial cleaners, multipurpose cleaners, food cleaners, corrosion preventers, and parts washers.  The published rules also include propose minimum biobased content for each of these products.


But the list of relatively new soy-based products goes beyond those nine.  Soy-based ink is a selling point for printed products; elevator grease is now in wide use, and soy roof coatings were used in the renovation of a major tourist attraction in Chicago.

For our purposes there are a number of household construction and finishing materials which are based on the humble soy bean.  These products are green on many levels but perhaps the most important is that they contain no volatile chemicals such as formaldehyde that can off-gas and cause allergies or illnesses in persons with sensitivities.

Among the home products that emerge from the little green pods are wood and concrete stains and coatings, carpet backings, adhesives, roofing and roof coatings.

We stumbled across our first reference to these products (we will look at many of them in detail at later dates) while researching home insulation practices.  It turns out that yet another new product in the green marketplace is soy-based soy-insulation.

We will begin blogging about insulation, starting with the soy-based variety, tomorrow.