As if the food-versus-fuel debate weren’t enough already, along comes some new fodder for a potential food-versus-plastics debate: Victor Creative Media’s new rice-based CD/DVD cases.

In all fairness, Tech-On! reports that the new plastic cases are made with nonfood rice … though I’m not sure what that is. Anyway, the cases do offer some environmental advantages, according to Victor, which is part of Victor Company of Japan/Kenwood Corporation, or JVC/Kenwood.

With 10 percent of their material coming from rice rather than plastic resin, the CD/DVD cases require less petroleum to produce. And while it seems it would be more eco-friendly to recycle such cases rather than incinerate them, Tech-On! notes that the Victor cases, if sent to the furnaces, would result in 10 percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions because the rice component would simply return to the atmosphere carbon that had previously been absorbed by the rice plants.

While the rice-based cases are a bit more expensive than their non-rice counterparts, they can provide businesses that offer them a little boost of green cred. Victor notes that orders for the new CD/DVD cases have already started coming in, with the first products likely to appear in stores within a month or so.

Tags: bioplastics, CD cases, DVD cases, rice based plastics