Photos: Baking plastic from plants

Cereplast is building a plant in Indiana set to be 10 times the size of the 100,000-square-foot California facility. That would triple Cereplast's workforce to 150 people and make the company the world's largest maker of bioplastic resin.

However, competitors Metabolix and Natureworks, which is run by Cargill, specialize in corn, producing more than twice as much as Cereplast. The farming of corn for bioplastics and fuel is controversial because the crop robs the land of topsoil and is often raised from genetically modified seeds. Cereplast says it does not use genetically modified plants.