Healthcare is awash in single-use plastics. In U.S. healthcare amenities alone, greater than 2,800 tons of plastic packaging and merchandise are thrown out every single day. 

Few persons are extra conscious of this than Eddie Yu. Early within the pandemic, Yu based an organization that made disposable masks. In the future, his niece was with him whereas he was sorting recycling, and she or he requested him whether or not his masks was additionally recyclable.

“I instructed her that truly we are able to’t recycle the masks,” he instructed TechCrunch. “She simply interrupted me and mentioned, ‘Oh, you then make a number of trash every single day.’”

The little lady’s phrases caught with Yu, and after promoting the masks firm in 2021, he got down to make amends.

In an effort to tame healthcare’s single use plastic downside, Yu’s new firm, Okosix, has developed a brand new bio-based, biodegradable polymer. Okosix is a part of Startup Battlefield, and it will likely be presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt later this month in San Francisco. 

Okosix blends numerous compounds together with cellulose, chitosan derived from crustacean shells, wax, and a proprietary materials. The result’s cheaper than polylactic acid (PLA), a extensively used biodegradable plastic, with performance that’s “the identical and even higher than PLA,” Yu mentioned.

Amongst plastics, the time period “biodegradability” is usually misused, Yu mentioned. Some require very particular circumstances to decompose, whereas others merely crumble into micro- or nanoplastics. 

“We’ve bought worldwide certifications to show that the fabric is totally gone in six months,” Yu mentioned. 

Okosix is beginning with face masks, but it surely plans to additionally make surgical robes, diapers, and sanitary napkins, Yu mentioned. “We need to use a protected materials, non-plastic, to interchange fossil plastics for disposable merchandise.”

Although the corporate has but to carry out a proper lifecycle evaluation, Yu mentioned that Okosix’s materials ought to have a carbon footprint that’s 90% decrease than that of polypropylene, a widely-used single-use plastic.

Okosix sells its materials to 3rd events, which then flip it into numerous merchandise. “For the time being, our enterprise mannequin is like Gore-tex,” Yu mentioned. “We don’t make the completed merchandise, however we make the layer, we make the uncooked supplies, after which we work with corporations like 3M.” He added that branding might develop into a big a part of the enterprise, just like Gore-tex.

The startup has raised $2.3 million, together with investments from the founders and different angel buyers.

Hear extra from Okosix and dozens of different startups firsthand, take part in worthwhile workshops, and make lasting connections at this 12 months’s Disrupt, happening October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.