WinCup's phade PHA straws a foodservice gamechanger

The phade straws manufactured by food service ware manufacturer WinCup look, feel and perform like regular plastic straws. There, however, the resemblance ends. Made from the biopolymer PHA, these straws completely biodegrade in any environment where bacteria is present. They also mark the turning point in WinCup’s transition to a more sustainable product portfolio.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, WinCup has eight manufacturing facilities throughout the United States. The company is a major player in the foodservice product space, servicing customers in virtually all channels with a wide range of products. Until a few years ago, these were all made from conventional petroleum-based plastic. During a recent interview with Sustainable Plastics, Brad Laporte, CEO and Michael Winters, President/CRO explained how – and why - they arrived at the decision to transition towards more sustainable products.

According to Michael Winters, who has been with WinCup for around 16 years, it was the result of the realisation that, while WinCup had a very broad base of customers, it offered them no eco-friendly or sustainable products.
“We started working on the idea of creating a biodegradable foam cup,’ he said. “That was our first idea.”
Several years of brainstorming, research and development followed, culminating in the development of the company’s Vio biodegradable foam cups.
“It took us, I guess, about six years of testing to ensure that this product would do exactly what we said it would do,” said Brad Laporte, Wincup’s CEO. “But Vio is an interesting technology, in that we take traditional EPS and change the molecular structure thus promoting enzymatic secretion and biodegredation.” 
Landfill testing under conditions simulating wetter and biologically active landfills using the ASTM D5511 test has shown that the cups biodegrade 92% over 4 years.

The reason the cups are not certified is because 4 years is too long to comply with the certification requirements, said Laporte.
“We have done all the third-party testing and the laboratory testing to show that it does biodegrade, it just doesn’t within the period of time specified in the standard.”

Changing direction
The development of the Vio cups, however, galvanised the company into action – action that was hastened by the uproar created by a video that went viral showing scientists removing a plastic straw that had got stuck in the nostril of a sea turtle.
“We had a huge outcry of customers who, all of a sudden, were demanding products that were more eco-friendly and that did not threaten marine life,” said Winters. “They wanted products that would ‘go away’ if they happened to end up in the environment. They wanted us to supply a product that fit the bill.”
At that time, straws were mostly made of PP. Paper straws and straws made of PLA were also available, but paper straws did not function well while PLA does not biodegrade in the marine or a home compostable environment.
“Brad and I went on a search to find a solution. And when we found this family of biopolymers called polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHA, it propelled the company in a totally different direction.”
PHA proved to tick every single box, he added. “A game-changer.”

phade
Laporte and Winters had never seen a substrate that could do what PHA claimed to do, and at first, were highly sceptical.
“Brad and I decided we would ‘test this thing to the nth degree’ - which we did. When the results came in from test lab OWS we were astounded. The speed with which the products broke down was amazing, and test after test came back with the final reports stating the products had completely biodegraded,” said Winters.  
Their disbelief, however, was hard to shake. They therefore had additional marine disintegration testing carried out to ensure no microplastics remained in the water following the degradation of the PHA, and even set up their own fish tank with saltwater and fish in it.
“We wanted to see with our own eyes whether this stuff would actually vanish in a marine environment. When it did, after 58 days in the fish tank, we were finally able to accept the data and what we were seeing,” he explained.
The company started exploring the PHA market and ultimately selected Danimer Scientific, a Georgia-headquarted company that produces PHA through the microbial fermentation of canola oil, as its PHA supplier.
Eighteen months later, in 2020, the phade straw, made from 100% PHA, was launched.

Obstacles
At the beginning, there were numerous challenges to overcome. In the first place, the supply of PHA was tight and not always reliable. WinCup opted to partner with Danimer because it was nearby, and canola oil seemed the right direction to go.
“Canola is a dual crop: farmers can plant their first crop of whatever and then do a second crop of canola. Canola has a short mature season, and actually can mature twice in the same year. So, it made the most sense for us to go with that technology.”
By creating a partnership with Danimer, WinCup was able to secure a steady supply of PHA.
However, when WinCup first started producing the straws, it was an expensive operation that the company was not making money on, said Laporte.
Four years later, production has been streamlined and the process has become faster, more efficient with less scrap. More PHA is coming into the market and the increased competition is driving the price down.
“It’s all happened before: when polypropylene came out, polyester was really the only material back then. By comparison, polypropylene was very expensive. Yet, over the decades, polypropylene has become a commodity and prices have fallen. I perceive the same thing happening here. It’s only a matter of time,” said Laporte.

Learning curve
WinCup also had to learn how to process PHA. “The first trial was a disaster - we actually had to evacuate the building because of smoke. There were 23 additional trials needed before arriving at the product that is in the market today,” Laporte said. “So, while the first few months were rough, since then, we’ve learned so much.
Fast forward four years from then and we can now make just about anything out of this material.”
The six or seven years of experience the company has gained working with PHA have been a steep learning curve. Today, however, “WinCup has the expertise to produce most any type of product we want to.” said Laporte.
One advantage was the fact that the company was able to utilise its existing capital infrastructure for producing the straws. Although a few adjustments needed to be made, we didn't have to recapitalise the whole business, noted Winters.
Like traditional straws, phade straws are extruded, which is one of the cost benefits against paper.  “Plus, the maturity rate of a tree is up to15 years, versus two months for a canola plant, which also helps us be competitive.”
A PHA straw, he added, performs just like a traditional plastic straw - so it doesn't get soggy. And while paper straws have been shown to contain such undesirable substances as PFAS, phade straws contain no PFAS, no harmful chemicals, no polyvinyl acetate or glue.  
According to Laporte and Winters, it has, to date, replaced 1.7 billion paper or plastic straws with its phade PHA straws.
“By the end of this year it will be over 3 billion straws. Three billion straws stacked and on end will go all the way to the moon and little over half the way back or about eight times around the Earth,” said Laporte. “That’s how much plastic we've taken out of the waste stream or the supply chain with something that degrades and returns back to nature without any harmful effects.”

Looking ahead
WinCup does not intend to stop at making just straws from PHA. The company has already created the world’s first paper cup featuring a PHA lining that is 100% marine biodegradable.
It already has customers for the new cup. “With this product, cost is less of an issue, explained Laporte. “When we created the phade straw, we made a 100% change, from PP to PHA. Here, it’s only the coating that has changed. The fibres, the biggest part of the cup are the same – it’s only the coating that has the increased cost. It is less invasive from an economic perspective.”
The next step will be cutlery made from phade PHA. In fact, Winters and Laporte are planning a broad portfolio of products, all made from WinCup’s phade material.
Asked about where the drive to take the gamble on sustainable foodservice ware comes from the answer was clear: both Laporte and Winters enjoy solving issues and problems.
“And there's a quote from former ice hockey player and NHL great, Wayne Gretzky, that has always stuck in my mind,” said Laporte. “He said ‘always skate to where the puck is going, not where the puck is at’. We like to run the business the same way , in other words: where is it going versus where is it at right now? What will give us more profitability, more margin and more opportunity to invest in new technology in the future?”
Moreover, he added, ‘when you do good things, good things happen’.
“Last year we decided to change 100% of our EPS foam business to Vio. Not because our customers were asking for it, but because it's the right thing to do. We're doing things the right way, and we're getting rewarded for it.”
These trends are going to continue in this space, Winters went on to say.  “Doing this differentiates us from our competitors. When you're running a business, you've got to capture the mind of the consumer in some form or fashion. We are trying to be the leader in the sustainable and eco-friendly space in the food service business. And we will keep at it because that’s who we are. We're just trying to make a difference out there. And I believe wholeheartedly that the financial benefit will continue to come.”

Saving the coral reefs
When WinCup created the phade straw, it did so with the intention to innovate a straw that performed better for consumers that had a very rapid end of life story. It turned out to be an innovation that did more than that.
A Florida team of marine scientists has come up with what they are calling a “Coral Fort”: an innovative solution for protecting young coral from predators. The coral, which is reared in the laboratory before being moved to the ocean as part of ongoing reef restoration efforts, is preyed on and destroyed by fish as well sea urchins. In Florida, parrotfish bites are a particular challenge.
The “Coral Fort” is a device that uses a limestone disc surrounded by the phade brand of marine biodegradable drinking straws to protect the young laboratory-grown coral. The straws shield the coral and then fully biodegrade, leaving nothing behind.
The team’s research findings show more than 90 percent of corals placed within Coral Forts off the coast of Fort Lauderdale were free from parrotfish bites and are now thriving, up from less than 40 percent survival rate without assistance from Coral Forts.
“Coral reefs represent some of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, providing a habitat for a variety of marine life,” said Kyle Pisano, who conducted offshore experiments with the Coral Fort as part of a master’s degree program at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) and is now CEO of a new venture called Reef Fortify, Inc., which represents the new technology. “With global coral reef populations in steep decline, scientists all over the world are searching for solutions for restoration. No other device for predator protection like this exists. All of the other devices that have been tried require cleaning by divers when excessive algae accumulates on them.”
For the Coral Fort, the researchers tested both tube and straw options made with the biopolymer PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), which is derived from the fermentation of canola oil, to ensure their safety in a marine environment. They found that the phade straw degraded far more rapidly than the tubes.
The new device makes it possible for coral put into the ocean in reef restoration efforts to grow and thrive. It is a simple, inexpensive and environmentally safe solution that has attracted interest from researchers all over the world who are faced with coral predation challenges.
“Who could have imagined that a drinking straw – something that is often thought of as a pollutant in marine environments – could be a potential solution to the rapid disappearance of our coral reefs,” said Brad Laporte, CEO of WinCup, the manufacturer of phade.

This story first appeared in the May/June issue of Sustainable Plastics.