To celebrate Global Recycling Day we joined Insiya, CEO and co-founder, and Ines, commercial lead, at Shellworks to learn more about their process, how the company was born, and to unpack the visionary thinking behind Vivomer – a new biobased packaging created from natural microbes that breaks down entirely without a trace in home compost.
WHY WAS SHELLWORKS CREATED?
INES: Shellworks was created in 2019 to tackle plastic pollution. The name comes from the first material that we ever worked with, chitosan, which comes from shells. We pivoted from that relatively quickly for a couple of reasons. It's not vegan, which is really important to the industry, but also it doesn't have the water properties that you normally associate with plastic. That led us to developing Vivomer. What's really interesting about it is that it’s a natural material. Nature makes it, nature unmakes it.
HOW DOES VIVOMER WORK?
INSIYA: The best way I know to explain it is that it's made by a collaboration with nature. We have a number of these small microorganisms that grow in our marine and soil environments and inside of them they actually have an ability to make a molecule that is a polymer that is inherently a plastic, but it's as though nature had made this material. The beauty of it is because it's crafted by nature, when you throw it away, they [natural microorganisms] still recognise it and are able to break it down into its natural constituents, returning them to the soil.
HOW LONG DID VIVOMER TAKE TO PERFECT?
INSIYA: It’s taken some time to perfect. A lot of it has been trial and error, trying to get products into the market, seeing what works, what doesn't work. Fundamentally it’s an interdisciplinary collaboration.
WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST LEARNING?
INES: One of the challenges that we have is how do we explain our material because it's so different from plastic in its end of life, but so similar in use. It's challenging to explain that this jar or bottle that looks like plastic is actually going to home compost and will biodegrade in nature without leaving a trace.
HOW CAN I RECYCLE WITHOUT A COMPOST HEAP?
INES: The best way to dispose of Vivomer is in your home compost in your garden. Depending on what your compost conditions are, it will be gone in a few months. If you don't have home compost, do you have friends or family who compost, can you give it to them? And if that's not an option, you can throw it in the general waste bin because it's safe to incinerate and will biodegrade in landfill as well.
INSIYA: If Vivomer does accidentally end up in recycling it'll get sorted out and go to either landfill or incineration. If it ends up in the environment, which is the worse case scenario, it will still degrade and won't leave any microplastics or toxic chemicals behind.
WHAT’S YOUR VISION FOR A PLASTIC-FREE FUTURE?
INES: I think the future for us is anything that is made with plastic could be made with Vivomer one day. That's incredibly exciting as a company, but also as a person and someone who cares about nature.
WHAT WOULD SURPRISE PEOPLE MOST ABOUT THIS PROCESS?
INES: We don't use any specialist equipment to manufacture, so Vivomer can be used in existing plastic manufacturing machines. It’s exciting because it means it doesn't need a huge amount of investment on infrastructure to make this a widespread material.
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPACTFUL THING PEOPLE CAN DO TO REDUCE THEIR PLASTIC CONSUMPTION?
INSIYA: The best thing people could do to reduce their plastic footprint is to reduce what they're purchasing. The second would be reusing. But then the third is trying to learn more.
INES: Another thing that’s important is using your voice. You can ask your local supermarket ‘why are you packaging this in plastic? Is this really necessary?’ I think at the end of the day the more people who talk about this, the more executives and governments will pay attention.
