Bioplastics
Customer demand for greener products has reshaped the plastics industry, with one of the fastest growing sectors being bioplastics. As the name suggests, bioplastics are ones that are either biodegradable, bio-based (made from a renewable resource such as corn or sugar cane), or both.
Because biodegradable plastic still ends up as smaller pieces, it takes decades before the pieces disappear from nature, plus most biodegradable or compostable packaging requires special industrial facilities for processing. Enter startups replacing single-use plastics with fiber-based sustainable products, from clothing to cardboard, that can decompose in your backyard or the ocean.
With fiber-based innovations, “we see the potential to truly address the root cause of the packaging pollution problem, as well as opportunities to disrupt other industries,” says Otilia Barbuta, a senior associate at HP Tech Ventures.
To that end, HP is partnering with European startup accelerator program TechFounders to support three companies in the molded fiber space. (In February, HP announced it had acquired Choose Packaging, inventor of the only commercially available zero-plastic paper bottle in the world. HP’s 3D printed Molded Fiber Tooling Solution — which produces the tooling to the customer’s required design — will help Choose Packaging scale up production.)
Simplifyber is changing the way clothing is made, using a cellulose-based material and creating a simplified manufacturing process. GrowPack is using corn husks to create packaging, starting with replacing the six-pack ring with its bioRing solution. And Plannalto is using sugarcane bagasse (the fibrous juice removed in sugar cane milling) as alternative material sources to replace typical wood material and is developing new types of applications with it.
Barbuta says HP Tech Ventures is particularly excited about fiber-based innovations because of their ability to impact other industries, such as construction (where fiber-based materials could form panels or tiles) and agriculture (where farmers may be able to commercialize their agricultural residue and unused feedstock.)