Some plastic waste is invisible: Shampoo, laundry detergent, and other common products often use tiny capsules made of microplastic as an ingredient. Those capsules then wash down the drain and can pollute waterways. A startup spun out of the University of Cambridge wants to replace those capsules—and other plastics that are hard or impossible to recycle—with a plant-based material that can easily dissolve.
Unlike other bioplastics, it doesn’t need to be modified chemically for the materials to hold together and be durable, but it also dissolves much more easily. “We don’t modify the molecule itself in any way,” Knowles says. “We just reassemble them in totally different arrangements. And it turns out that if you do that in a smart way, you end up with these really strong materials, which are still nevertheless totally degradable, exactly the same way as a spider’s web is degradable.”
Xampla, the startup spun out from the research, plans to release its first products later this year. Though the technology could be used to make different types of plastic, they’re focused on the areas that can have the biggest impact first, including the microplastics in laundry detergent. “If you think plastic bags are difficult to collect from the environment, imagine trying to collect these bits of plastic which are too small to see by the naked eye,” he says. “Once they’re in the ecosystem, they’re there for thousands or tens of thousands of years.”
Recognize your company's culture of innovation by applying to this year's Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards before the final deadline, April 5.