The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations, 3.28.18 release

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According to BIO, the global economic value today of the biobased economy – including industrial biotechnology, renewable chemicals and polymers, biofuels, enzymes and biobased materials – is $355.28 billion. And looking at the new USDA Indicators report and other sources, BIO estimates that the United States generates 58 percent of the global value of biobased manufacturing, or more than $205 billion. And that economic activity supports employment for 1.66 million U.S. workers.

The driver? Rampant scientific innovation, which we are going to be highlighting in a four-part series which kicks off a new Digest weekly feature — Top 10 Innovations.

The pace of invention and change is just too strong, we’ve realized, to highlight annual or even quarterly or monthly rankings and summaries of significant product and service advances. For now, we’re going to be tracking these on a weekly basis to keep pace with the changes.

Case in point? The USDA BioPreferred Program, which facilitates the development and expansion of markets for biobased products, the number of renewable chemicals and biobased products that are USDA-certified has rapidly increased from 1,800 in 2014 to 2,900 in 2016.