VEnvirotech is facing two different problems: the plastic crisis and the waste of organic waste. Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental problems, as the increase in the production of disposable plastic products exceeds the world's ability to take care of them. Most of these plastics end up in the ocean, the largest plastic sink. Every year between 4.8 and 12.7 million tons of plastic reach the oceans. Moreover, approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food, is lost or wasted every year. In addition to the economic impact, food waste ends up in landfills, becoming responsible for creating 3% of global GHG.
To address the challenge of plastics crisis and effective waste management in a circular economy model, the European Commission (EC) has defined strategies to replace conventional petroleum-based polymers with biopolymers, also known as bioplastics. In many cases, bioplastics have a plant origin which implies large areas for growing raw materials, becoming competitors in agricultural land for biofuels, livestock feed and human food. Additionally, many of these bioplastics, despite having a biological origin, are not biodegradable or only partially biodegradable. For all these reasons, although bioplastics represent a good alternative to petroleum-derived plastic, there is still an important uncovered need: to have a completely biodegradable bioplastic, totally derived from organic waste, and that can be produced in a competitive way.
One of the bioplastics that are generating great interest from the market are polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), produced by bacteria. Unfortunately, due to its expensive production process, the currently commercialised PHA cannot compete with conventional plastics in the market. At VEnvirotech, we have identified all threats present in current PHA production processes, and we have developed an innovative production process that will allow us to obtain a PHA from organic waste, at low cost and with more than 95% of purity: the VE-0Plastic.
