Massachusetts Chronicle

12 million metric tons of plastic enters the oceans each year. Those statistics are shocking. Plastic is not only damaging the environment, but also damage our sea life.

Although plastic is in our daily lives, most people don’t understand the damage that plastic products like water bottles and straws can damage the future of the planet, and how long they take to biodegrade and how much space they took up in landfill sites. Sadly, plastic products can take thousands of years to biodegrade and can pollute the natural environment. Green Peace has for many years called on authorities to do more to ban plastic products due to the damage they cause the planet. One company who understands the damage they cause our future is Timeplast.

Timeplast is introducing sustainable plastic technology that can change the world and stop the reliance on fossil-based plastics. Instead of producing biodegradable or compostable plastics, Timeplast focuses on water soluble products. Their water-soluble plastics simply need water to break the material down, which is great news for the environment and the planet. What this means in real terms is, plastics will be able to dissolve after their intended use instead of taking thousands of years.

The founder of Timeplasts, Manuel Rendon said ever since he began to understand the limitations we have as species to become a type 1 civilization on the Kardashev Scale, also known as a technological base of measure for sustainable societies, he went ahead and focused his life on working to address plastic pollution.

“I started studying environmental engineering and developed a series of tests to better understand everything related to conventional plastic’s molecular structure, with the goal of creating a new type of material that could substitute it. I thought it would take my entire life, but it only took me 17 years from the first scientific publication I made to this day,” he explained.

We have sat down with Manuel Rendon, founder of Timeplast to learn more about the man behind the exciting new technology and how the technology works. This is what he had to say.

Can you explain who is and what is Timeplast?

Timeplast is what comes after plastics. Is a material that can replace conventional plastics with the main difference that it goes away in hours after being discarded, not weeks, months, or years. Not only that but we invented a new way to make plastics.

In essence we’re transforming the industry mainly in three areas. The first one is the actual type of material we created. Even though water-soluble materials have existed for a very long time — for example, polyvinyl alcohol was created in 1924 — all of the water-soluble plastics so far either don’t dissolve at Earth’s average water temperature or they do dissolve in cold water, but the dissolution process starts so instantly that we can’t make any practical applications that aim to substitute the uses of conventional plastic. Timeplast is a water-soluble material, yet it is water resistant for a programmable and limited period of time, which allows for conventional plastic substitution applications. We were able to not only create one type of plastic substitution material but multiple, including expanded materials to substitute conventional plastics such as expanded polystyrene, also known as Styrofoam.

The second area is in the form we polymerize or actually make our materials. Typically, plastics are made in big polymerization reactors. It’s a whole industry with a large carbon footprint. In our case, we developed a technology that allows the use of our customers’ plastic manufacturing machines as our polymerization reactors, incredibly optimizing energy consumption while using the same energy to make, let’s say, a bottle to polymerize our materials.

The third area we believe Timeplast is transforming the industry is in the perspective we’re presenting to the plastic pollution issue. For the longest time, it has been said that having a biodegradable plastic, a bio-based plastic, a recyclable plastic, or even fully recycled plastic would solve the problem. However, we know that it is not the case, as biodegradable plastic requires a certain level of bacteria concentration and other requirements which you don’t find in most environments on the planet. Bio-based plastics are just a literal carbon copy of fossil-based plastics, which means they’ll pollute the same way, and recyclable or recycled plastics will degrade every time they go through a recycling cycle, making them even more prone to microscopic fragmentation due to cross-linking and microscopic ash formation. Not to mention, the cost of capturing, sorting, and recycling plastics at needed levels exceeds any feasible current proposal or business model. 

Timeplast brings a new perspective to the table: water solubility. Our planet looks blue from outer space for a very good reason. Nature intended for water to recycle and clean our environment at planetary levels. If we keep making non-water-soluble materials, we are contradicting the grand chemistry of our planet, and just like Francis Bacon said, “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”

You have developed a new patented techno-organic plastic that completely goes away within 60 hours of being discarded in water, how was this developed and who will use it?

Correct, Timeplast uses a polymer array so innovative that its type of chemistry used has started to appear only recently in a study published in Nature Chemistry Journal, where Peter Christensen and colleagues discovered how to make a new plastic which could be fully broken down and then fully repolymerized in a single heating cycle respectively, using a PDK poly(ketoenamine)s innovative pathway. This process is so pioneering that it was labeled as the “$2.5 trillion Holy Grail of Plastics”. All of this at a time where Timeplast had already been working for 15 years on the same hyper-complex chemical problem, and having patented a very similar approach but with a commercially available plastic, instead of a laboratory specimen like Christensen, since we managed to further innovate in the depolymerization and repolymerization mechanisms to the point we could replicate this pathway in many different types of polymers.

Plastic material has become a huge problem in the modern world and can damage the environment, so can you explain how your organic plastic is going to make a difference?

Unlike all “green” labelled plastics in the past, Timeplast only needs water to fully decompose. It doesn’t need bacteria, nor any microbiological source, nor heat or oxygen, it just needs liquid water. A material that can replace almost all uses of plastics while having such a fast and true decomposition rate has never been seen before.

Earth is mostly covered in water, which makes our approach to sustainability obvious and correct. That’s how we’ll make a difference.

So, if your plastic was put in the sea, would it have the same dramatic damaging effect on sea life as standard plastic?

Not at all, Timeplast will disappear in a matter of hours with 100% certainty. There won’t be any situation in which Timeplast will not go away in the oceans. It’s an absolute certainty that we won’t pollute the oceans, as intended by design, and unlike any other plastic out there.

Who came up with the idea behind your product and what testing has it gone through?

I happen to also be the inventor behind the technology, we have done an extensive number of tests, all at independent and certified laboratories. Our products have been tested at some of the world’s most respected institutions. These facilities include the Avomeen Laboratories, Eurofin Labs, Peak Experts and many others to determine compatibility and adherence to U.S., E.U. and Worldwide sustainability standards such as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) regulations for solubility.

Could you see one day that your plastic will be used for everyday items like in supermarkets?

When you enter a grocery store, over 90% of all the plastic you see is not in constant contact with water, which means we can replace it. Not only plastic but cardboard containers, such as the cereal boxes, metals and even glass.

How safe is your plastic?

We use raw materials that have been independently approved by the FDA as safe for human consumption. Chances are that if you’ve eaten ice cream, you’ve eaten the base of our chemistry. Our products will be the safest portfolio of materials out there since our standard will not be limited to food-contact only.

Supermarkets are now trying to move away from plastic material so they can be more respectful to the environment, how are you going to convince them to use your product instead of the alternative materials that are currently using?

Timeplast is more environmentally friendly than paper, cardboard, metal, glass and of course conventional plastic. Not only because it’s the only water-soluble material from them all, but because the way we manufacture our plastics give us a much smaller carbon footprint than any of the aforementioned materials.

Is your product going to be more expensive that the current plastic material on offer and alternative materials that are being used?

Another great benefit of Timeplast’s new manufacturing technology, is that reduces the total cost of producing our materials, and it places our price point at the cheapest level of any other bio-based plastic, cheaper than paper, metal and glass, and closely competing with conventional plastic.

How would you like to see your product used and how are you going to educate people to use your product instead of other alternatives?

Timeplast will redefine the way we think about plastic. Our programmability and limited water resistance will allow us to transition smoothly, however there will be a learning curve in terms of how much we expect from our materials. We can’t expect something to last forever and by the same token complain about its sustainability. There will be a compromise, but a manageable one.

For more information, please visit https://www.timeplast.net/

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Company Name: Timeplast
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Country: United States
Website: https://www.timeplast.net/