As Brad Laporte pointed out, the reason that there are so many single-use plastic items is because there is an industry for these products. They score high on convenience and cost, two factors neither the industry nor consumers are especially eager to relinquish.
“How realistic is reuse? We've preferred instead to go down the path to see whether traditional fossil fuel products can be replaced with biobased products without sacrificing performance. That led us to develop our phade products, all of which have the same characteristics as traditional products, but without that environmental footprint. Because people want to take the easy way out.”
Those products – especially the phade straws – can offer exactly that.
“Phade has continued to grow. We're at our three billionth straw sold and distributed in the United States. If you were to stack those straws end to end, they would wrap around the earth 16 sixteen times. We are changing the world - and we are continuing to develop new products, cutlery and even a home compostable paper cup. Traditional paper cups have polyethylene linings in them, while the linings in these are PHA. It’s the world's first marine biodegradable paper cup.” Another new development is a cup lid made with phade material instead of polystyrene and a paper-based take-out container with a phade coating. “So, we have a lot of new products in the pipeline to try to reduce our environmental footprint,” said Laporte.
As well, Laporte sees an opportunity for WinCup’s home compostable products opening up. People didn’t like paper straws, he pointed out. And now, studies are coming out showing that they contain chemicals that persist in the environment after the paper has disappeared. “PHA straws have none of those problems. It also has the advantage that it is an environmentally friendly choice.”
That, he added, offers a strong motivation to continue to choose the sustainable option, even if the restrictions on using the traditional fossil-fuel based products have been lifted.
“The younger generation is far much more environmentally aware than we were. And as they grow up and move into purchasing roles within companies, they're the ones making decisions on what products they're buying for the companies that they work for. I think they're going to make more sustainable decisions than we would have at 30 years old or at 25 years old. And we are already seeing instances where this is the case. There are companies that, while they may, for example be laying off corporate employees, are still not retracing or backing away from their sustainability goals or what they're doing for the environment, and their promise to sustainability,” Laporte said. He added that the company had not seen a decline in demand for its phade products since the ban of plastic straws was lifted.
Getting the message out
One of the hardest things is creating an awareness of the fact that there is an alternative to fossil-based plastics that is not paper. WinCup is active on social media with campaigns and seeks out press coverage. The third route is via legislative activities.
“I am on the plastics Advisory Council for the state of New Jersey,” Laporte explained, “I do a fair amount of speaking at the alternative fuels Conference in Washington, DC. We do a lot of meetings with governors and senators and congressmen and women and explain to them that there are alternatives. You don't have to ban a complete product. You just have to be smart about the education and innovation that's actually happening here in the US and around the world.”
People, he added, are listening, and are happy to be presented with an alternative that's good for the environment without having to sacrifice performance. WinCup is also active in the Caribbean and working on some partnerships in in India. As the benefits of PHA are not yet recognised in the EU, the company does not have a presence there.
“What's interesting about PHA the polymerisation of the plant actually happens inside of the bacteria. So, it's naturally polymerising versus synthetically polymerising. But they have not distinguished the between the two in their laws,” said Laporte.
Next to awareness, education is another issue, especially in terms of helping the public understand about greenwashing. “We've seen things like Agave straws, that we’ve done testing on that turn out to be 98% polypropylene and 2% agave - but that are marketed as Agave straws,” he said. “And then there’s the confusion regarding compostability – people who don’t know the difference between industrial and home composting. In fact, quite a few of those arguing in legislative arenas around compostable tend to lump everything together, without having any understanding of the fact that, say, PLA and PHA are two separate materials. Yes, both are biobased, and both are compostable but in reality, they’re very different. We are talking very different technologies and a very different end of life.”
Supply competition
Asked about the price, Laporte said that it was improving, with more supply competition coming into the region – larger PHA suppliers from different areas in the world. “It’s going to take a while,” he said.
“There's just not enough, not enough competition yet in that area to drive price down.”
He added: “You can do things for money, or you can do them because it’s right. If you do things for money, then chances are it's going to be short-lived and not a long-term strategy that you want to, you want to adopt. If you do something because it's the right thing to do, I truly believe the money will follow.”