Subsequent yr will mark alt plastic maker Notpla’s ten-year anniversary. Though not a brand new participant to the packaging scene, Notpla (quick for ‘not plastic’) has come a great distance from the times of sitting round a kitchen ‘creating bubbles’.
“We began with intention and just a little little bit of magic in our kitchen,” recalled co-founder and co-CEO Pierre-Yves Paslier. What the packaging design engineer refers to as ‘bubbles’ had been truly algae-based membranes able to encapsulating water and different kinds of liquids. Notpla (then generally known as Skipping Rock Labs) coined the invention Ooho: an edible bubble designed to interchange single use plastic packaging.
During the last 9 years Notpla has been increasing its portfolio to incorporate takeaway meals containers, inflexible cutlery, spice sachets, and meals oil pipettes, in addition to functions for beauty and family cleansing merchandise markets. All are comprised of seaweed and vegetation.
Seaweed packaging impressed by fruit
The impetus behind creating an alternative choice to single use plastic got here from environmental issues, defined Paslier at FoodNavigator’s latest Local weather Sensible Meals digital summit.
Though plastic is a high-performance materials, cheap and available, it is usually inherently tied to plastic air pollution. “The quantity of plastic that [humans] pump into the ocean is beginning to have complicated implications for marine life. Microplanktons are consuming increasingly more microplastics, which have a destructive affect on their well being – and finally on the well being of people as nicely.”
On the hunt for options to single use plastic, Notpla turned to nature for inspiration. Fruit peel, for instance, naturally protects its contents whereas being utterly biodegradable in the best atmosphere. In contrast to bioplastics, fruit peel doesn’t require any particular end-of-life human intervention to decompose, and a few fruit casings – such because the pores and skin on a cherry tomato – are utterly edible.
“If we might design packaging a bit extra like fruits, we [knew we] would have one thing actually fascinating,” recalled Paslier. That’s, partly, the intention of Notpla, he continued, “to create packaging that may be actually edible, which you can devour identical to a cherry tomato”.
In taking inspiration from nature, it’s unsurprising Notpla’s answer can be sourced from nature. Seaweed is one among nature’s most renewable sources, mentioned Paslier. Not solely does it develop quick, however it additionally sequesters carbon because it grows. Additional, there are many totally different species of seaweed, comprising a number of totally different properties. “We expect that seaweed is unbelievable…And one of many unbelievable issues about seaweed is that you need to use it to create a variety of various packaging options.”
From Ooho to the EarthShot Prize
Notpla’s first seaweed-based software, Ooho, was nicely acquired by customers. With the flexibility to biodegrade in 4 to 6 weeks, or else consumed, the corporate trialled its improvements at sports activities occasions such because the London Marathon in 2019. One yr prior, Lucozade Sport piloted the edible seaweed packaging – crammed with its sports activities drinks and gels – on the Richmond Marathon and Powerful Mudder sporting occasions.
On these events, Notpla was in a position to exchange a ‘enormous’ quantity of plastic that sometimes would have been utilized in simply sooner or later, defined Paslier. “Now we’re working with Decathlon to interchange [packaging of] its vitality gels, in order that [consumers] don’t have to make use of plastic and aluminium sachets.”
Ooho know-how can be getting used to create residence compostable sachets for sauces, condiments and salad dressing for the meals service business.
Not too long ago Notpla additionally made its mark within the takeaway meals container area, having gained the EarthShot Prize launched by Prince William to help options that ‘restore and regenerate the planet’.
Whereas typical containers are lined with plastic coatings to guard towards grease and moisture, the start-up has developed a biodegradable seaweed coating.
To make its packing containers – of which Notpla has manufactured thousands and thousands already – the corporate extracts ‘gelatinous components’ from seaweed to develop a formulation for large-scale equipment. “It might probably then undergo the remainder of the conventional chain of producing at business normal pace and create a number of totally different types of packing containers that be utilized in a number of totally different functions.”
As soon as used, the entire packaging might be composted. In line with Notpla, worms, fungi and microbes love its invention: ‘Our containers grow to be meals for different residing organisms’.
“We at the moment are energetic in a number of stadiums round Europe,” Paslier added.
A ‘future proofing’ invention
From a enterprise perspective, Notpla considers itself fortunate to be working at a time when legislative stress round plastics is constructing.
Within the UK, a Plastic Packaging Tax got here into drive final yr, and a ban on single-use plastic bowls, plates and trays was enforced on 1 October. Within the EU, Member States pay a plastic tax on non-recycled plastic waste, with some Member States introducing their very own plastic taxes on single-use plastic packaging.
In November 2022, EU guidelines on Packaging and Packaging Waste had been adopted. Regulators have outlined ‘very clearly’ what does, and doesn’t represent plastic, defined Paslier. “We’re…clearly out of the plastic class. [Businesses that use our products] should not going to face any of the bans or taxes which are being utilized increasingly more to plastics.
“We’re really future-proofing, and serving to manufacturers change away from plastic.”
