Sustainable Packaging
Industry Experts discuss all the new materials and ways that packaging can be more sustainable and how we can do our parts to help recycle and reuse. Sustainable Packaging is and will continue to affect us all in our daily lives. We have lots of fun and get down to the real data of what's working to help our planet!
Sustainable Packaging
$1,000,000 prize winner Edible Seaweed NotPLA co founder Pierre Paslier
https://www.notpla.com/
How did they win $1,000,000?
What is Prince William really like?
How can seaweed change the world?
https://earthshotprize.org/prince-william-visits-notpla-as-they-unveil-new-earthshot-branded-product-and-prepare-for-major-fundraising-round/#:~:text=Less%20than%20six%20months%20after,moulding%20technology%20Prince%20William%20tested
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/packaging-today-show/id1656906367
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Packaging Today Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/6dksVwqEFVDWdggd27fyFF?si=e924995740f94e19
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/
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This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.
Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is my friend, Mr. Pierre Paslier, the co founder of NotPla. How are you,
Pierre Paslier:sir? Yeah, very good. Thanks for having
Cory Connors:me. It's an honor to see you again. We met a long time ago back in the days of Clubhouse with Adam Peake and Avelia Matos and Sean Drew and all of these fun characters who got us through the pandemic and talking about sustainable packaging. But, tell us a little bit about yourself, sir. I'm excited to, to tell the world about you. Yeah.
Pierre Paslier:so, I'm one of the co founders of NotPla. in a nutshell, NotPla is a sustainable packaging startup using seaweed and plants as an alternative to singular plastics. and just for kind of like context, I actually started my career in plastics. So I was a packaging engineer was working for L'Oreal, the cosmetics company, like working on launches of, skincare products and sunscreens and so on, with, boxes and bottles all made of plastic, hundreds of millions. And certainly like they will be around for the next kind of like few hundred years. So, After kind of like a little bit of kind of like learning the ropes in the industry, I think I realized that I felt a bit disconnected with the reality of those of those products and the materials that were used for making them. so I, I quit my job and I came to London, to study a master's at Imperial College and Royal College of Arts. where I met my co founder Rodrigo, who's a designer and architect by background. So until this point, no link with seaweed whatsoever. And during our, our, our masters, we got really interested in basically like the idea of making packaging that would feel more like a fruit. Then like, industrial container. And so, we started experimenting with in a way like no lab, no access to kind of like specific machinery. So the place of experimentation was our kitchen and our raw materials was. whatever was kind of like, available to buy for making food. and so that limited us greatly, but also it gave us kind of like really clear, like safeguards in terms of not introducing anything that would not be, like from the realm of, like food. And after a lot of kind of like funny, experimentation and very weird dinners where friends would come and not really know what was going to happen, we, we, we stumbled upon, Some of the building blocks for, for, for NotPla, the technology that is used for making fake caviar is kind of like fake, fake little kind of like, fish eggs that, was invented by Unilever to make, yeah, basically a very cheap, food product, by using an extract from brown seaweeds. And mixing it with, with a salt and at the moment that these two kind of like, come together, they form a little bubble that encapsulates a little bit of kind of like, in this case, kind of like a fish egg flavored liquid. But actually it's relatively easy to, to kind of like. Replicate this in your kitchen. And we, we started to kind of like source some of those brown seaweed extracts and, and, and create some bubbles in our own kitchen and realize that like, we could actually make them bigger and bigger. So we didn't have to just make droplets, sized, products. And that was really the starting point for, for this whole adventure of NotPLA. We, we came up with the first kind of like, let's say kind of like. Cherry tomato sized bubbles that were, encapsulating water at that point. and surprisingly that extract is transparent. So it was basically like a transparent cherry tomato that contains water. Very weird, but, kind of magical because it was this little membrane that was like, essentially like a food. So it was packaging you can eat and the fact that you could eat this packaging really made kind of like, I think a huge impression on like people who saw the video that we made about this little kind of like experimentation in our kitchen that went absolutely viral to our surprise, because we didn't really expect it was not very refined. It was very much kind of like a student. and experiment at that point. but the fact that you create these edible bubbles that contain water, that you could like eat packaging, that really kind of like was something that I think caught people's attention. And that really got us kind of like started thinking we can't leave it just in the kitchen. It's got to kind of like become a real solution. And we've got to bring this to kind of like, a place where you can actually. Can you replace some plastic? and so, yeah, after we graduated, we decided to kind of like work on this as, as a startup and, and there's been a lot of kind of like evolution since then.
Cory Connors:You've, you've made some big changes. This is very exciting and you're right. The beauty industry has a very, challenging road ahead for towards sustainability. so that makes sense to come from L'Oreal and, and, and be, aggressively, Moving towards sustainable packaging, and in your case, even edible packaging, which is amazing. I'm so excited to learn about this, and I want to talk a little bit about what, which materials, this, your product could replace that would be a big jump towards sustainability.
Pierre Paslier:Yeah. so let me give you a quick kind of like round trip of some of the solutions we're, we're working on. So, as I mentioned, like, we started with this little kind of like bubble, this, program we call Oho, because that's actually the, the, the, the sound of surprise that people kind of like make when they see it. So he's like, Oh, so we're like, I love that. So basically, we, we started realizing that this was like, Potentially really great for a lot of applications, but also like not suitable for a lot of other applications. We've, we've kind of like focused on places where this makes sense to replace plastic. Right. And one of those places is for marathons. So if you have seen kind of like one of those big mass participation races, there's kind of like plastic on the floor everywhere. It's actually kind of like quite dangerous people kind of like to their ankle and, and so on. So we were like, if we can deliver. Water or energy gels to tens of thousands of runners in a day. We could sell, save kind of like potentially like hundreds of thousands of kind of like single use plastics in just one event. And in this case, you don't need to have something that has like a three year shelf life. You don't need to have something that is going to be kind of like going through a super crazy supply chain. So the somewhat kind of like more, nature like features of the seaweed were actually compatible with this particular application. And so excitingly after having done a lot of kind of like marathons ourselves, including the London marathon and kind of like, seeing that people are really. Excited about this idea of like practicing their sport without using plastic. We're now partnering with, like the, the global sports retailer, Decathlon. And we are kind of developing, a range of energy gels. So little kind of like bubbles that contain, essentially like a dose of kind of like energy gel. And these are edible. And that
Cory Connors:can you explain that? What can you describe it for people that are just listening?
Pierre Paslier:So essentially, like, it is a. Pillow shaped bubble that contains, a liquidy and energy gel. typically you would see those in, like, aluminum foil, plastic laminate sachet that you have to kind of like, maybe kind of like bite off the corner or use two hands. So that Decathlon was very keen to, first of all, replace the plastic, but also to have something that was just usable with one hand. If you're, if you're cycling because you're doing a triathlon or if you're kind of like practicing any sport that requires kind of like a lot of balance, you don't want to have to use both hands to actually use a piece of plastic. So the fact that you could grab this from your pocket and you could eat the whole thing in one gesture. And not throw away a piece of plastic was something that they were really excited about. so we are definitely kind of like, excited about this partnership. and in this case, we are initially targeting, kind of like events. We are, we've also worked a lot with the brand to adapt the, the content of their energy gel to be more suitable with the. Like somewhat limited barrier properties of our seaweed so that we actually have something that like meets in the middle to enable those most sustainable kind of like packaging solutions like ours to exist on the market rather than like using super kind of like fragile, like, colorants and, and fragrances and flavors and kind of like active ingredients that require. Three layers of different plastics, because they are kind of like very kind of like, easy to degrade. So there is, there is a bit of like a two way street. If we want to enable more sustainable packaging solutions that truly are, natural, biodegradable, even edible, that that's a bit kind of like a necessary step in some cases. Yeah.
Cory Connors:It's, it's exciting to, have this new technology. Was there a learning curve where the first time you brought these did runners say, what is this? I don't know. What are you, what are you handing me?
Pierre Paslier:There is definitely kind of like, a great deal of kind of like improvement we've done on like onboarding and preparing people to the fact that it's going to be a different format. that like, we don't force anyone to eat packaging. Packaging is very often here not to be eaten. It's here to protect. But just like in fruits, a lot of time, like we don't eat the, the, the fruit peel. So actually it's not that weird when you think of it in the world of kind of like fruit and veg. And often when we work with brands, we tend to kind of like provocatively say, if your products were fruits, what kind of fruits would they be? And let's create, and so I think that like, we see that in marathons, maybe about like half of the runners will eat the packaging and half will throw it on the ground. But again, like once it's on the ground, it's made from like the, the polymers that are naturally present in the seaweed. So these, polymers have been around for kind of like a billion years on this planet. So nature has no problem to break them down, in a variety of different ways, different microbes, different organisms. so unlike, bioplastics like PLA or PHA that are kind of like, considered plastic under the, the EU kind of like, definition of, of, of plastic, this is really a natural, polymer, just like cellulose that makes. Paper is a natural premier.
Cory Connors:I think it's going to be a huge part of the future of sustainable packaging. I was so excited to get to interview you and talk to you again. do you see that there's maybe some retail products that could could use this kind of material? like, like those gels that you talked about, maybe they'd have a shorter shelf life, but they'd still be available in a store.
Pierre Paslier:For sure. So I think that like, what we've realized is that our, our main right now, the film, is actually, like has limited, whatever, what water vapor barrier properties. It has pretty good oxygen barrier properties. It has like, obviously kind of like the functionality of grouping things. So there's a whole host of things that actually could kind of work very well with this as a plastic replacement. so with our kind of like, our film, we're now targeting, a range of different applications where typically like the properties are good enough. So we are seeing a first range of, like, soluble films for detergent, powders and concentrate cleaning products, with a company called Mac, in, in the UK. but we're going to expand this to essentially kind of like applications in dry food. Applications in kind of like, yeah, like, cleaning products and applications in cosmetics, where there is already a lot of kind of like products that meet the requirements in terms of kind of like, compatibility and, and barrier properties.
Cory Connors:Seaweed is the future. It's, it's amazing. I wanted to say congratulations on winning the Earthshot prize, a million dollars. Wow. Congratulations. well done and well deserved.
Pierre Paslier:It's been a super exciting year. obviously we are usually honored by this, this price. I think it's also a price that like has, such a, like an amazing story. It's really looking at like. This, decided decisive decade, the, the, the next kind of like, eight years. Cause he was like, yeah, number two, that, that we won the, the, surprise. But like the, the next eight years are going to represent like another kind of like round of, short winners that like are critical to. Get us in a position where we are not destroying planetary health the way we are doing now. And I think that being part of this group, this cohort, is, is, has been absolutely amazing. Don't get me wrong. The, the million kind of like pound, check is very, very valuable. Yes. Beyond that, it's really the, like the level of credibility that it gives us and the gravitas, because very often, especially in like, in the industry. it's so easy for us to be kind of like treated as the, the last priority to always be kind of like pushed back to next month or whatever it is. And I think that like, when we need, partners to really kind of like work with us closely to enable those technologies to work at scale, we we've seen that like, yeah, getting the Prince kind of like, to a seal of approval on this has made in people wanting to be part of this winning solution. We
Cory Connors:need, well said we need attention. for these new concepts for consumers to get on board. but I got to ask about Prince William. He seems like such a cool person and you've, you've got, you've got to spend quite a bit of time with him lately. what's he like? Well, tell
Pierre Paslier:us about him. So it's, it's been a bit surreal because it's true that like we have probably kind of like seen him like, five, six times since the royal family. But, so. I think like, we've been lucky because we are the, the first kind of like Earthshot winner who's located in, in the UK and in London. So actually like by the sheer proximity we have with, the, like where the Earthshot Prize team is based and, and the Prince, we've had like a few opportunities to kind of like, spend some, some time with him. he actually came to visit our office and spend like an hour and a half going from the lab to kind of like the, the workshop. Producing kind of like some products himself talking to our partner. So really, really amazing in terms of kind of like dedication to, like. Furthering the cause that he's kind of like, like that he's kind of like supporting with this, this, surprise, in terms of like him personally, it's incredible that, like, he's so switched on about this topic. So it really is something that I think, like. Runs through this family, I think they deeply care about, like, sustainability . He's, he's kind of like father as well was kind of like, very much kind of like a play in here in kind of like, raising awareness around, the, the kind of like planetary health issues. so you can really feel that it, it doesn't come as some sort of like quick. like way of, branding a bit, kind of like the, the, the Royal family as, as like taking a little bit of part in this, sustainability, revolution we need, but it's really coming from kind of like a deep interest. he even kind of like knows surprisingly, like a lot about seaweed and I think he's kind of like, Been, like researching a lot and getting really kind of like, deep into looking at all the solutions, how he can help himself accelerate them. it's real when he came to the office, we ended up having pizza in the, kind of like, the, the next door and he was just kind of like chatting about how he can like personally help us by connecting us with like, for example, he's like, Like he's, the patron of the football association in the UK. So he was like, Oh, I'll just kind of like, make sure that I mentioned it at the next board meeting, right. When like, when business development is done by Prince William, high level interest. so, you, yeah, you can really feel that like, he's very genuine about it.
Cory Connors:He seems like he truly cares and you're right. It didn't. I've been following you closely as for years. but to see how genuinely the time he spent seemed very valuable to him, not just you and your team. But, I agree. He seems like he absolutely cares about the planet and wants to make a huge impact. let's talk about all those samples that you showed me before we started. I'm really excited to, share with the audience some of the different things other than just, not just the one thing that you have, but you have, coatings for, to go packaging, look like utensils. The let's go over those.
Pierre Paslier:For sure. so essentially like once we have realized the potential of seaweed, for the application of like, encapsulating, water and energy gel for running events, we got really excited about the fact that this could apply to other types of singular plastics. And at that point we were working quite closely with Just Eat, the like home delivery kind of like, like, food, platform. And one of the things that they were sharing with us is that One of the, the struggle is that all of the food comes in packaging that is either wholly kind of like made from plastic, or even if it's cardboard, it's never just cardboard. It's cardboard with a thin coating, made from, from plastic because it doesn't hold the grease and the moisture of the food. So, that really got us, like, started on working how we could apply our seaweed. As a, as a coating onto cardboard to make the entire kind of like, like food service box, essentially kind of like plastic free. And that's been something that we've been kind of like really exciting to develop. So this is kind of like, this, this product that we are, now kind of like producing at scale. and again, like, this is cardboard on the outside, but inside there is this thin, shiny layer of kind of like seaweed that replaces the need for petrochemically derived plastics like PE or bioplastics like PLA or even more kind of like sneaky. But recently there is this new thing called aqueous coatings that has been exploding on the market. Basically, it's a very kind of like clever marketing way to say that it's At one point contain water because it's across this perfect coating, but it doesn't tell you anything about what it's made of. Right? And when you, the small print, it's actually poly aate and polystyrene in microplastic form that are applied onto to the surface of those boxes. To give the resistance to the kind of like water and grease. So it's actually like the worst of both worlds, because in this case, those boxes that are kind of like predominantly, cardboard, the best kind of like end of life of funny is recycling to get the fibers back and give them a new life. But you can imagine that when you actually recycle something that is coated with microplastics, that microplastics goes straight into the wastewater straight into our rivers and our oceans where he will stay for kind of like, hundreds of years. So, actually, by kind of like. introducing those microplastic coatings, we're just kind of like making our, microplastics problem even worse. so we've been really excited to, for this product actually introduce a technology that is a retrofit into the industry. So we are applying this, at scale. With like a curtain coating technology with partners that already have factories that are kind of like available at scale so that we can start making these products at large scale right away without having to wait for a new factory to be built. and that's a bit the way we imagine to, to work, to bring our materials as a, as a replacement for plastic or synthetic, additives, and then kind of like use the existing. infrastructure. today I think we've put like over 3 million, of those boxes on the market in eight countries, Europe. So we're really starting to get some nice traction, but it's still early days because obviously it takes a little while to get kind of like the contracts and everyone understanding what we're doing. A lot of people believe that they're actually using already plastic free solutions when they're not. but we are seeing like a very kind of like fast acceleration on this front. and we have like a, like built a team that comes from like all our competitors with people bringing a lot of people are really kind of like joining this, this solution as, as a vouching for the fact that it is the next gen. It is plastic free. It is kind of like, helping us switch away from this addiction we have with plastic.
Cory Connors:Right. amazing. Can you show the side of that box that to go container for us and read and read what it read your, read your slogan there. What's that
Pierre Paslier:say? So, simple guilt free disposal. so basically like. wherever it's possible to recycle, it's the best way. So we say like, wipe clean and recycle with God, or, throw it in your home compost. I know that, things will end up, in nature. And that's why we test kind of like our materials, in a kind of like standard kind of like. no specific condition of temperature or anything to see what happens. And actually like within 30 days, our kind of like material is completely turned into, into compost. We even recently got the chance of testing our material in a simulation of a gray whale gut, like next level biodegradability studies. Incredible. And, and we passed kind of like easily this test because again, seaweed is plentiful in the ocean. So that's not like it's the first time that like the whale has kind of like eaten some seaweed, but it really is kind of like about using abundant, natural materials that nature already has fully kind of like, taken into, into account in the natural cycle of life and not introducing something that it's never seen for more than like. 10, 30, 50 years, because then that's when we create problems.
Cory Connors:To me, it seems like the best case scenario. I mean, to be able to recycle, this curbside with any cardboard, stream, which is in, as far as I know, 1 of the top, 1 of the easiest things to recycle globally, 1 of the most established, supply chains of the circular, economy, paper and cardboard and corrugated, all of those things, town. As far as I know, are one of the best, solutions for, sustainable packaging. And then to add on the fact that you can throw this in your compost bin at home, if it's just soiled beyond cleanliness, beyond repair. I think this is, the, It's the future. I'm so excited for you and for your team and, and all that you've got going. Tell what's next. You've got, you've got some other things. Yeah.
Pierre Paslier:So what's next is looking at more rigid applications. So up until now. We had been developing a lot of, flexible solutions. So our initial, but also like flexible films for making sachets using the heat sealable properties of our film to be able to kind of like go through vertical forming, feeling, seeing machines and so on. but increasingly we work in to find ways to use. our material, in, in most standard kind of like processes, like injection molding or extrusion. And so we've been able to develop, like a pellets, that, is kind of like, able to be injection molded. The 1st application that we are working on is disposable cutlery. especially because this is very closely linked to the business that we are developing with the boxes for kind of like food service. there's also kind of like some interesting changes in legislation in the UK. They're getting banned from like, 1st of October. in the Netherlands, they have already been banned since kind of like, a few months. And there's definitely kind of like a lot of countries that are looking at eliminating those types of, single use plastics. So having the ability to introduce something that is natural, that is not plastic, and that is kind of like biodegradable is, is really, like of interest for a lot of our clients. but we're not just looking at, I'd like cutlery. I think that like, injection molding is such a wide, spectrum, of, of kind of like, products that we're really excited to see what else we're going to be able to do with our pellets. so we have some kind of like developments around kind of like, closures, around kind of like, applicators, different types of kind of like items that might have a chance of ending up in the environment and where you don't want to kind of like, don't want to leave plastic behind. So one of the funny application we've kind of like, started with is a golf tees, because those, you just kind of like smash them or leave them behind to get lost. and in this case, the material is soluble within kind of like a few kind of like days. So at the next rain, it will just kind of like. Solubilize and become fertilizer for the grass, in, in the, in the gulf. so that's kind of really exemplifying again, the fact that if you have something that works within nature, we're not creating waste. We're just kind of like letting nature take this to the next cycle. and, and yeah, like there's still kind of like a long road ahead in terms of optimizing properties for more demanding applications, but, for a number of kind of like, like. applications where uses within kind of like a few minutes. That's, that's something we can already do. and we are looking for more partners working to kind of like use our pellets in lots of different ways. That's exciting.
Cory Connors:I'd sure like to introduce you to the team at Aurora Packaging and we'll come up with some amazing things to do around the world to improve sustainable packaging. So, very exciting. Pierre, thank you so much for your time. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you and your team?
Pierre Paslier:Yeah. So, best way is to, contact us, directly from the website. If you want to kind of like give us a bit of context, on what you're doing, it's on NotPla. com, but you can find us on like social, at NotPla. and, we'll be happy to kind of like explore how we can help remove some of that plastic. that you might want to
Cory Connors:eliminate very exciting and thank you, Orora packaging for sponsoring this podcast here. I'm, I'm honored to be a friend of yours and excited for your future. stay tuned for more. Thank you all.
