The advantages of plant- based industrial products can be illustrated by the principles of green chemistry including the call for the use of renewable feedstock, the minimization of hazards, and the generation of substances with as little toxicity as possible(Schwartza et al., 2008 H. Schwartza, V. Ollilainen, V. Piironen and A.-M. Lampi, Tocopherol, tocotrienol and plant sterol contents of plant oils and industrial fats, J. Food Comp. Anal. 21 2008, pp. 152-161.Schwartza et al., 2008). Because of their biobased nature, products formed from plant oil are often biodegradable, and because the CO2 generated from their degradation can be incorporated into the next year's crop, they can be nearly CO2 neutral.

Many efforts to define "green" and "sustainable" have been undertaken, and principles for green chemistry have been defined (Anastas and Warner, 1998 P.T. Anastas and J.C. Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press, New York (1998).Anastas and Warner, 1998). Metrics have been developed and also applied, for example, assessing environmental, health, and safety hazards, including life-cycle inventories ("cradle to factory") and life-cycle assessments ("cradle to grave") (Warner et al., 2004). Based on the results from life-cycle assessments, ecological and toxicological studies for selected cases, one can assume that products based on renewable resources usually are more ecologically compatible when compared with petrochemical-based substances-an important criterion in the development of a new product, just as price and performance are (Sumathi et al., 2008).

The successful development of environmentally compatible and powerful products in the sense of a sustainable development has been demonstrated by various examples of recent product innovations from plant oil. The ability to replace petrochemicals with renewable resources is becoming a worldwide issue. Deriving products that meet consumer demands and performance expectations is an ongoing challenge. Issues such as ultimate bio-degradability, co-product utilization and amount of available bio-resources will always be paramount. It can be assumed that in the future further possibilities for using renewable resources will be intensely investigated.

Plant-based products will be a significant part of the industries of the future.

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