In 2022, we shared our vision of the transformation of plastic through an innovative collaboration with the US Department of Energy’s Bottle Consortium. Today, this vision from the laboratory concept goes to commercial trials. Through work with our partners – from material researchers to recycling facility to Amazon Fresh Stores – we demonstrate the steps to prove a new value chain for plastic derived from renewable resources and easily recyclable, while being naturally biologically degradable.
When we first started this work, we knew that we had to develop a new recycling technology that could effectively treat biologically degradable plastic as it is not something that exists in scale today. Our specific focus was on polyester -based biodegradable plastic. The molecular spine in these plastic contains carbon-filler bonds which are much easier to break down than the carbon carbon bonds found in more common plastic, such as polyethylene or polypropylene.
The ester compounds that make these types of plastic more susceptible to biodegradation also make them easier to collapse in controlled environments where the remaining molecules can be recycled back to new materials. Solvolsis techniques, such as methanolysis and glycolysis, are developed into polyethylenrephthalate (PET), but they could be expanded to other polyesters, such as polylactic acid (PLA) or polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), which is slightly biodegradable.
While focusing on the recycling of polyester-based biodegradable plastic or biopolyesters, we also aimed to make this new recycling technology work for a mixed waste stream of materials. There is no single biodegradable plastic that can meet the different needs of different packaging applications, and applications will often require mixtures or different materials that are layered together.
Having a separate recycling current for each new type of biopolyester plastic would be impressed and probable Unconomic. Nor would it solve the problem of recycling mixtures and multi -day materials. When we worked behind this insight, we parted with researchers at the National Renewable-Energy Laboratory (NREL) to perform a comprehensive analysis-comparative different chemical recycling methods for recycling a mixed waste stream of polyester-based plastic.
Our first analysis, recently published on an Earth, provided that the scientific foundation of what would become Esestecycle ™, a new startup founded by one of our partners at Nrel, Julia Curley. Esestecycle ™’s technology uses low -energy methanolysis conducts with an amincatalyst for selective breaking the ester bonds that hold these polymers together.
It is important that the recycling technology was developed to handle a mixed waste stream of polyesters without requiring extensive excursion of different materials in advance. This is a crucial advantage because it means that we can start recycling biopolyesters, even if they resume a small part of the waste stream that treats them together with more common materials such as PET.
The development of Esestecycle ™ technology represents an important step towards our vision of a more sustainable circular value chain for plastic, but for Esestecycle ™ to succeed in scale, there must be a reliable supply of materials for recycling. This is where our partnership with Glacier Technologies comes in.
Glacis that Amazon’s Climate Pant Fund has recently invested in use A-driven robots to automate the sorting of recyclable and collect data on real-time recycling flows. In real time, the proprietary AI model of the Glaciers can identify an intervals of different material and package types, from stiff pet containers, such as thermoformed clam shells, to multim material flexible packaging, such as snack bags.
We launched a sorrection experiment with glacier and a recycling facility in San Francisco to test how effective Glaciers AI vision and robot systems could identify and spell bio -estate packaging. An important insight from these attempts was that packaging design significantly affects AI detection. Packaging with existing visible features was properly identified by Glaciers AI models 99% of the time. However, lookalike materials and inconsistent designs led to high misidentization rates. These results will help us and our partners design packaging that is easier to recycle when designing and testing new biopoles for new applications.
Our next step in helping to build this new value chain for plastic was to test and try new biopoles in applications in the real world. Our first priority is to minimize the packaging – and even eliminate it where possible. But there are some applications where packaging is needed and paper is not a sustainable option – especially applications within specific and strict requirements, such as monthly barrier characteristics. To understand how biopolyesters work in these critical uses, we launched several commercial attempts across our operations.
In Seattle we tested biopolyester production bags made with Novamont’s materials in Mater-Bi in Amazon Fresh Stores. Customer feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with 83% of Amazon Fresh customers who reported that they “really liked” the new composting bags. Ourf-Life test showed that the bags performed in the same way as conference plastic bags in keeping products fresh in the first week after purchase, although different types of products showed different results in long-term storage, which is the area where we work developers to improve.
In Europe, we successfully tried biopolyester preparation bags on three Amazon -filling centers near Milan, Italy. The majority of associated companies reported that the biopolyester bags were as easy to use as conference plastic bags without any influence on operational efficiency. Similarly, we tested in Valencia, Spain Biopolyester bags for the delivery of grocery store through Amazon Fresh. This sample -news showed improvisations in quality metrics, including reduced speeds for damaged and missing items compared to Convental Packaging.
These experiments show that biopolyester materials can effectively replace conventional plastic in many applications while pleasing customers and enabling continued operational expertise. Data and findings from these experiments help build self -confidence across the industry around these new materials, which are crucial to operating wider adoption to replace conventional plastic.
Today we cannot yet reuse these materials in scale, so composting is the temporary opportunity for life’s life. As ester cyclus scales and as glaciers enable more material recovery of facilitities to sort a ranking polyester, from PET to PLA to new PHAs, we are included in a future where these materials are widely accepted in household recovery programs, making it easy for our burle materials.
Building a new, circular value chain for plastic is a complex challenge that requires multi -level innovation – from developing new materials and recycling technologies to creating the infrastructure that will enable these mattres to be collected and treated on scale. Through our work with partners such as Nrel, Glacier and Novamont, we demonstrate that this transformation is possible.
While there is still a lot of work to be done, we are encouraged by the progress we have made with our partners. We are pleased that by continuing to invest in research, innovative support starts and collaboration across the value chain, we are at the forefront of a more sustainable future for plastic.