From drinking beer alone, people on average consume 10 microplastic particles a week, according to a World Wildlife Fund and University of Newcastle study. The study further shows that the average person consumes 177 times this amount of microplastics from drinking water.
One Triangle startup believes it has found a viable and scalable replacement for a broad range of plastic products that could help cut those disturbing stats.
Anindya Mukherjee, Founder and CEO of Wake Forest-based Phaxtec, says that Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) is a natural product that can replace many uses of plastic—which has its roots in fossil fuels—and reduce plastic pollution.
“The fact that this beautiful material can really overcome the challenges that plastics pose today is not very well-known among the consumer space,” said Mukherjee. “People talk about bioplastics, but really don’t know what bioplastics are.”
PHA is a natural polyester made by bacteria from renewable carbon. Since PHA is made by bacteria, it’s also consumed by bacteria, making it biodegradable, according to Mukherjee.
Yeast and bacteria can break down PHA, and it’s estimated that over 40% of known bacteria species have this capability, said Phaxtec CTO Dustin Heeney.
PHA functions similarly to plastics, with the ability to make plastic-like products including single-use food service packaging and coatings for food and beverage containers made out of paper, like the interior of a Starbucks cup.
Several startups have tried replacing plastic with PHA products. Mukherjee has been a part of four such startups himself, touting 18 years of experience working with PHA materials.
But after each of the four startups proved incapable of efficiently scaling and ran out of funds, Mukherjee decided to try it himself.
While some companies now successfully use PHA to replace plastics on a small scale, it’s minuscule compared to the world’s production of plastic, according to Mukherjee. But Mukherjee believes Phaxtec is scalable because of its renewable carbon source and its ability to make different kinds of polymers.
Phaxtec’s competitors are primarily using food carbon from sources such as canola oil and vegetable oil and sugar from corn and sucrose as raw materials, said Mukherjee. Large food companies and others compete for these materials, meaning they’re more expensive and would disrupt the commodities market if used to replace plastics on a large scale.
Instead of food carbon, Phaxtec uses biogas as its carbon source, the cheapest form of carbon for industrial processes, according to Mukherjee. The startup’s proprietary microbes can metabolize biogas composed of methane and carbon dioxide to create PHA.
“Essentially, biogas is free because it is considered greenhouse gas pollution,” said Heeney. “Biogas is considered waste by most entities. Anaerobic digestion of organic waste, which occurs in municipal wastewater treatment plants as well as industrial farms, produces biogas. Most cities [and] farms simply light the gas on fire while venting it.”
Broad potential applications
Other companies in this industry make products with a narrow range of applications, but Phaxtec’s technology allows the startup to make a broader range of products.
“The secret sauce is this backbone [of the PHA molecule] can be functionalized in many different ways,” said Heeney. “So, by messing around with the genetics of the microbe, you can change the way that those chains are built. And that will ultimately lead you to have something that’s a soft film like a packaging, for food service, or something more hard and dense for consumer goods.”
Phaxtec has signed letters of intent to license its technologies, which Mukherjee said will enable faster scaling. Mukherjee also patented Phaxtec’s microorganisms and processes.
The startup is still in its early stages of development, and Mukherjee estimates it’s two or three years away from commercialization.
Phaxtec is currently bootstrapped and funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Phase One grant, but Mukherjee has the company working on acquiring Phase Two NSF funding and bringing on a domestic lead investor to help reach commercialization.
Once it reaches commercialization, Mukherjee’s plan for Phaxtec is to prove the startup’s value by targeting increasingly popular plastic-coated products such as paper food containers and coffee cups.
Current plastic-coated packages like cups and food containers are sent to landfills, but the cellulose in the paper of those packages could be recycled up to seven times if they were coated with Phaxtec’s PHA coating.
Once Phaxtec has proven its value in this area, the plan is to move into pure plastic packaging such as wrappers or completely plastic food packages.
Aside from raising money, Phaxtec still has to hone production so that it can be cost-comparable with plastic products. Phaxtec’s products would be two-to-four times more expensive than plastic products right now, according to Mukherjee.
But Mukherjee said that Phaxtec estimates it can be cost-comparable to plastics in large part due to its future licensing agreements with larger manufacturers.
