Accept no compromise on microplastic pollution

‘Bio-’ is a buzz­word. Whether it’s applied to foods, fuel, tech or plas­tic, the pre­fix res­onates with com­pa­nies and con­sumers alike. But it can also be con­fus­ing in the case of plas­tic pack­ag­ing, as the use of bio­ma­te­r­i­al doesn’t guar­an­tee that the prod­uct is biodegrad­able or com­postable.

Find­ing a tru­ly sus­tain­able alter­na­tive to sin­gle-use plas­tic for dis­pos­able items such as cof­fee cap­sules was a dif­fi­cult task for the Coda Group. In fact, the Nether­lands-based pio­neer in bio­ma­te­r­i­al man­u­fac­tur­ing found it so hard that it had to cre­ate its own sole­ly nat­ur­al prod­uct: Soli­na­tra.

Soli­na­tra is a 100% plant-based alter­na­tive to plas­tic that is home-com­postable, requir­ing no addi­tives or spe­cial con­di­tions. It will sim­ply degrade in soil, just like a banana skin on a com­post heap. Soli­na­tra is not only green, though – it is mar­ket-ready.

When it comes to scal­ing up eco-inno­va­tions for com­mer­cial appli­ca­tion, the Coda Group’s man­u­fac­tur­ing exper­tise is what makes Soli­na­tra a seri­ous prospect for mass-mar­ket dis­rup­tion, accord­ing to its CEO, Robert de Jong.

“We know the indus­try and the chal­lenges it faces,” he says. “So we’ve devel­oped Soli­na­tra as a tru­ly sus­tain­able alter­na­tive with prac­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing inter­ests in mind from day one. It is viable, com­pet­i­tive and ready for brands to use.”

The prob­lem Soli­na­tra tack­les is both big and small at the same time: microplas­tics.

The environmental impact of microplastics

Even most bio­plas­tics don’t actu­al­ly biode­grade. Instead, they break down into tiny frag­ments. Mil­lions of these pieces of plas­tic enter our oceans each day, join­ing the tril­lions that already con­t­a­m­i­nate the entire marine ecosys­tem. Near­ly all of them are microplas­tics – frag­ments short­er than 5mm.

Such pol­lu­tion is evi­dent on the land and even in the air too. Microplas­tics have been found in the human food chain – con­tained in veg­eta­bles and even salt – and they can also be detect­ed inside people’s bod­ies.

Much as the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion prob­lem is com­plex, the man­u­fac­tur­ing solu­tion is decep­tive­ly sim­ple, accord­ing to Dr Daniel Lynch, Coda Group’s chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cer.

“What doesn’t go in can’t come out,” he says. “Made from plant-based ingre­di­ents such as rape­seed agri­cul­tur­al waste, Soli­na­tra con­tains no fos­sil-fuel-based plas­tic. It breaks down into com­post that’s safe to use on your gar­den. Zero com­pro­mise in pro­duc­tion means zero risk of pol­lu­tion.”

From farm to compostable fork

In sus­tain­abil­i­ty terms, using agri­cul­tur­al waste as a nat­ur­al feed­stock also answers the ques­tion of how the bio­log­i­cal ele­ment is sourced.

Grow­ing crops exclu­sive­ly for bio­ma­te­r­i­al would be so inef­fi­cient that the num­bers could nev­er add up, not least because of the sheer amount of land it would demand. An area equiv­a­lent to 35 mil­lion foot­ball pitch­es for grow­ing sug­ar cane would be need­ed to replace all the poly­thene in the world with biobased mate­r­i­al, which would still not degrade nat­u­ral­ly in any case. It would also require moun­tains of fer­tilis­er and lakes of water.

By recy­cling rape­seed, wheat or anoth­er of the broad range of patent­ed crop wastes instead, Soli­na­tra uses a cir­cu­lar solu­tion to mate­r­i­al sourc­ing that remains nat­ur­al and renew­able, while active­ly sup­port­ing farm­ers.

This makes the mate­r­i­al sus­tain­able for a large-scale roll-out to replace sin­gle-use plas­tics in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pack­ag­ing, includ­ing blis­ter packs; food pack­ag­ing, such as cup lids; and dis­pos­able cut­lery and straws. Soli­na­tra will soon be avail­able in Nespres­so-com­pat­i­ble cof­fee cap­sules, for instance.

This lev­el of main­stream­ing calls for indus­try-wide col­lab­o­ra­tion to solve a glob­al prob­lem, con­cludes Simon Girdle­stone, Coda Group’s chief mar­ket­ing and sales offi­cer.

“As an indus­try, we have the pow­er to turn the tide on sin­gle-use plas­tics,” he says. “We urgent­ly need to col­lab­o­rate to tack­le the microplas­tics prob­lem, so we invite man­u­fac­tur­ers and brands to work with us world­wide to realise this tran­si­tion to tru­ly
sus­tain­able solu­tions.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it Coda Group

Pro­mot­ed by Coda Group