Cargill Dow LLC produces a new packaging and fiber material – polylactide (PLA) – from annually renewable resources. The presence of the company and the PLA polymer on the industrial scene signals the emergence of a new model for industrial development in the twenty-first century. During the nineteenth century people relied predominantly on a wide range of natural materials, such as wood, hides, wool and starch, to provide the essentials of then-modern life. This picture changed significantly during the twentieth century, when people in developed countries experiencing the industrial revolution became almost totally dependent on fossil materials to produce the fuels, polymers and chemicals required for modern life. With exponential growth in the demand for fossil raw materials in both developing and developed countries today, the question increasingly posed is how we will derive the materials we will need in the twenty-first century. An increasingly broad range of experts and analysts have concluded that new – or in some very important ways, ‘‘old’’ – raw materials will become the foundation of packaging materials and fibers in a world challenged by the interrelated problems of depletion of fossil resources and of proliferation of global climate changing emissions, pollutants and solid wastes. A consensus remains that fossil resources will be required and used for quite some time, but it is also hardly doubted that maintaining and enhancing quality of life for a growing populationaround theglobe compels the developmentofnew technologies to produce packaging materials and fibers from new ‘‘old’’ resources like traditional agricultural crops (e.g., corn, wheat, sugar beets) and other grown biomass materials. It is in this new and renewed reality of renewable rawmaterials reliance that Cargill Dow LLC emerges. The objective of this paper is to answer the question: ‘‘What makes NatureWorks PLA a more sustainable polymer?’’ To answer this question the article addresses applications and marketing of PLA, costs, today’s and future renewable raw material resources, reduction of fossil fuels and the associated emissions of green house gases, waste management options, and manufacturing processes.