The 100-Year-Old Plastic Replacement Nobody Told You About

Hi {{FIRST_NAME|Readers}},

Quick one before tonight's note.

Recently, the new buzzword I keep seeing in enterprise technology is "context."

It shows up in every AI pitch. It rarely comes with an explanation of what it means for a procurement team in practice.

This Wednesday, I'm joining Dr Elouise Epstein (Kearney) and Alistair Cane (Axiom) for a live webinar to make it concrete.

We'll also tackle a few persistent myths about AI in ProcureTech (like the one that says you need great data before you can do anything with AI…)

Join us for an actionable conversation… Where debate may erupt? 👀

📅 Wednesday, November 11 | 11:00 AM ET / 16:00 GMT | 60 minutes

Otherwise, tonight's note is a bit different... 😅

We're still talking about technology, as usual. But we’re taking a wider lens.

Yes, ProcureTech is one way to grow your impact as a procurement pro (it’s probably one of the reasons you read this newsletter…)

BUT there are other ways to use technology to do it, and some of them don't come with a login.

Tonight's example is a jar. Sort of.

Reply and tell me what you thought.

Onwards,

Joël Collin-Demers
Editor-in-Chief

Last week, I was scrolling YouTube Shorts and landed on this video.

A practical, scalable replacement for plastic…

I went looking for the company behind it. Instead, I found a material a French microbiologist described in 1925… What?!

(Down the rabbit hole I went… 🐰🎩 But Magic is coming… ✨)

A while back, I told a room of executives to buy a cart. It held 6 gas cylinders instead of 4, cost $300, and beat every other recommendation on that mandate (the full story is here).

That cart changed how I define technology. I now use the broad version: the practical application of scientific knowledge, methods, and skills to solve problems, achieve specific goals, or improve human life. A screen is optional.

By that definition, the most interesting technology I've found this year is a material.

In 1907, a chemist named Leo Baekeland made Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic.

Plastic won the last millenium because it's cheap, light, moldable, and durable.

But durable is the problem… It lasts for centuries in a landfill or a river.

The OECD found that the world produces twice as much plastic waste as it did two decades ago. Only 9% of it gets recycled.

PHA stands for polyhydroxyalkanoate.

(Don’t worry, I’ve never been able to say it out loud either 😅)

Some bacteria store energy the way we store fat. Feed them carbon, and they build a natural polyester inside their cells. Extract it, and you get a material that behaves like plastic. Throw it away, and microbes in the soil eat it up.

Maurice Lemoigne first isolated it in 1925.

In the 1980s, the British chemical company ICI took it to pilot scale under the name Biopol. Wella used it for some shampoo bottles.

Then it stalled. The material cost too much and couldn't match polypropylene on performance. Monsanto bought the patents in 1996 and shut down its fermenters in 2004.

So the plastic replacement I found on YouTube already failed once, on price.

Several companies make PHA today, including Kaneka, CJ Biomaterials, Danimer Scientific, RWDC and Bluepha.

The one that reached my feed was Shellworks, a London startup founded in 2019. It sells its version as “Vivomer”, and its brand team deserves a raise. 😅

The pitch to packaging buyers is practical. Microbes ferment agricultural and industrial by-products, the polymer becomes pellets, and the pellets run on existing plastic molding equipment. Your packaging supplier keeps its machines.

Shellworks says its packaging lasts 3+ years on a shelf, survives the dishwasher, and is food-contact certified in the US and EU. It reports over 8 million parts shipped.

In March, it raised a $15M Series A to build production sites in the UK, EU, and US.

Wildsmith, a UK skincare brand, started with Shellworks and expanded the partnership in 2024 to move more of its range onto Vivomer. A second order tells you more than a launch press release.

La Pyae Apothecary uses Vivomer caps on its perfume bottles. The founder wrote that one of her caps is breaking down in her garden compost, and that she likes that it gets "an afterlife of sorts."

Dulcie, another skincare brand, built a page on its site explaining why it chose the material.

None of these brands publishes cost, defect rates, or test data… But filling that gap is what a sourcing process is for!

Cost.

One consultant told Fashionista that moving a client from virgin plastic to Vivomer would have raised its packaging price by 150%.

That's the price at today's volumes. Shellworks says it already matches glass and aluminum on cost at around 5 million units. Solar panels and batteries followed the same curve: more volume, lower unit cost.

The other change since the 1980s is competition. ICI had the field to itself. Today you can get quotes from several producers.

I haven't professionally sourced this material yet. That's where you come in.

The sustainability team can set the target. Marketing can want the story. Someone still has to find the supplier, test the material, negotiate volume, and check the claims.

That's us.

If this material can hold up to the marketing, it would be FANTASTIC.

But before I signed anything to get this into my production processes, here’s 4 questions I’d ask:

The cart from my first story was easy to find and hard to propose, because it didn't look like technology (and they had hired a technology consultant expecting 100% software recommendations… Gamble… 🎲)

PHA has the same problem, plus 100 years of being ignored. It won't show up on a ProcureTech market map or in an analyst quadrant. I found it on my phone by accident.

Procurement teams touch every spend category the business buys. And there are technological innovations hiding within each one.

Look closely at packaging specs, logistics, and facilities supplies, and you'll find technology. Some of it has been around for a century, waiting for the price to make sense.

Finding it is the easy part. Getting it adopted takes thought, and then persistence.

If your company ships anything in plastic packaging and you want 2027 to be the year procurement delivered something impactful that people can hold in their hands... this is your sign.

If you look more seriously into this, reply and tell me how it went. I'd like to share what you find.