MakeGrowLab: Less Food-Waste and Greener Packaging
A plant-based alternative to plastic coating for fruits and vegetables, a digital platform for circular fashion, a sustainable cushioning material, a plastic-like but ecological food packaging, a global platform for trading recyclable materials and a second-life usage for electric car batteries – these startup ideas are nominated for the 2022 Green Alley Award and they are going to incite the circular economy. Find out more about each of this year's finalists in this interview series.
The next Green Alley Award 2022 finalist we present you is MakeGrowLab from Poland. The startup develops oxygen and water vapor barrier coatings and films that can be either recycled like paper or biodegrade in your organic bin. With this solution, the startup contributes to tackling packaging waste, just like Flexi-Hex. Such solutions are needed because of the European Green Deal which aims at making all packaging on the EU market reusable or recyclable in an economically viable way by 2030. With 23,2% of all applications, packaging waste was also the top waste stream represented in the Green Alley Award 2022. Let’s learn more about MakeGrowLab and their innovation!
Your innovation is another great step to make packaging more sustainable. However, some
consumers might not know that it is compostable. How do you ensure that consumers
dispose of it correctly to benefit from its biodegradability?
Scoby Packaging Materials are based on high quality nanoscale fibers (not visible by human eye). SPM is fiber-based cellulose – just like traditional paper. It can be disposed with the paper stream, because when SPM is applied as an additive in paper packaging, it won’t cause trouble in the paper recycling facilities like conventional glues or coatings. There is also a scenario that material will not get recycled at all – in this case SPM will biodegrade in the natural environment, just like paper added to compost!
What is your USP? What differentiates your material from other bio-based and biodegradable plastics?
It is common practice to add fossil-based additives to plastic alternatives like paper cups or water bottles from paper and similar things. Our materials don’t contain additives from fossil fuels or any other toxic releasing substances. They replace plastic-based additives in paper or other plastic alternatives, giving required barrier and strength properties of packaging without releasing microplastics. Additionally, our innovation can be implemented into many material making processes without having to change the manufacturing machinery. That is a very important factor, which ensures that SPM can be incorporated in many single-use products – just like plastic, but without being an environmental burden.
Your coating is a truly circular innovation: Where do you draw the food waste from that is
needed to produce the coatings and films?
It is important to mention that MakeGrowLab can use a variety of feedstocks from food producers like juice makers, breweries or sugar mills. Additionally, we reuse substrates during SPM production, which makes this process even double-circular. Thanks to versatility of feedstock use we can plan scaling up the production outside of Europe, where other types of food waste are available.
Apart from having made it to the Green Alley Award 2022 finals, what has been your last
greatest success moment?
We are piloting our materials with companies like Colgate-Palmolive and we are currently raising a $2M round. With recent partnerships and programs we entered, MakeGrowLab is on pace to become the Europe's largest producer of bacterial nano-cellulose (BNC) for packaging and textiles use.
Our solution helps to save the world because…?”
… it incorporates production where we co-work with nature, not exploit it!
Besides, SPM helps to save the world because it adds barrier properties and strength to biomaterials without use of fossil fuels but with waste and the power of nature. Only small addition of SPM can make biomaterials lighter and more protective which will make them more affordable and safer to use by industries. SPM accelerates the adaptation of other biomaterials and really contributes to replace and minimalize the use of plastics in packaging.
Take your chance and watch MakeGrowLab pitch their idea live on stage in Berlin on 28th April, 6pm CET . Register here and meet our finalists in person.