Sustainable Resins to Replace Plastic

Plastics are used in a staggering variety of products, from furniture to clothing to packaging. The bulk of those plastics are made using petroleum (which isn’t sustainable) and will last more or less forever (which is also not sustainable). Luckily, there are other options.

A company called Pond makes resin products that can be used to make just about anything you can imagine being made from plastic — as well as products ranging from wind turbine blades to surfboards. Their resin materials are made largely from starch, which is a renewable, plant-based resource, and all of the materials are biodegradable when exposed to naturally-occurring bacteria species. In other words, the materials are sturdy — but can be safely composted when they reach the end of their life cycle.

Pond’s materials are sufficiently adaptable that they’ve already created one spin-off company: Pond Textiles, which is aimed at bringing new bio-based materials into the fashion manufacturing sector. That spin-off has already secured capital investment from Brightfolk A/S.

Originally published at https://www.dmass.net on July 1, 2019.