It is estimated that almost 80% of all plastic ever produced has ended up in landfill or the natural environment. Polymateria's Chief Executive Officer, Niall Dunne, explains how the company is developing biodegradable and compostable plastics which break down naturally when they’re no longer useful - using a proprietary formulation called Biotransformation.
In joint development with Imperial College London, Polymateria works with the best and brightest minds from the fields of chemistry, biology and polymer science to develop practical biodegradable solutions that help nature deal with this plastic pollution crisis while also supporting recycling. Polymateria’s proprietary Biotransformation technology is a bespoke approach to fundamentally redesigning plastic packaging at point of manufacture with some unique and fundamental differences to anything else that has been tried before.
The Biotransformation process can be time-controlled, according to a product’s shelf life, and given a ‘Recycle By’ date to promote recycling by consumers but ensure that any fugitive plastic that leaks from the system into the natural environment can fully and safely return to nature. Lab tests have proven that Biotransformation under real world conditions occurs within 226 days for polyethylene films and 336 days for rigid polypropylene containers.
Up Next in Season 1
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RE:TV Reusing Captured Waste
We need to reduce the emissions coming from the energy and industrial sectors if we are to reach Net Zero. CCm Technology's Chief Executive Officer, Pawel Kisielewski and Chief Technical Officer, Professor Peter Hammond explain how they capture carbon dioxide, ammonia, nitrogen and other waste st...
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RE:TV Recycling Coffee
We drink over 2 billion cups of coffee every day, generating millions of tonnes of used coffee grounds each year. Left to decompose naturally, these grounds would give off 2.3 billion cubic metres of methane, the equivalent in terms of global warming to France's annual CO2 emissions. bio-bean has...
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RE:TV Rethinking Waste
With almost 70% of the world’s population expected to be living in cities by 2050, dealing with urban waste is one of the major challenges facing us today. Copenhagen's iconic Copenhill facility combines a clean waste to energy plant with an outdoor recreational space, including a dry ski-slope -...
