Tethis’ mission is to offer plant-based alternatives to manufacturers around the world to enable production of products that are more sustainable, empowering consumers to be better stewards of our planet. Our bio-based absorbent materials can be blended with or can replace petrochemical-based superabsorbents polymers (SAP), depending on the product, specifications and use.

The Problem

With each passing year, hundreds of millions of tonnes of petrochemical-derived products are added to the world’s landscapes and oceans; most do not readily biodegrade and often cannot be effectively recycled. Of these products, single-use personal hygiene items such as diapers and sanitary napkins are among the most problematic because demand for them is so high (and growing as developing economies accelerate consumption).

Market Mega-Trend

Over the last decade, consumer demand continues to move in the direction of sustainability. A study by Unilever revealed that one-third of consumers are now buying from brands based on their social and environmental impact.  A Nielson study of 30,000 consumers in 60 countries revealed that two-thirds were willing to pay more for products from companies that are committed to sustainability. That was up from 55% in 2014 and 50% in 2013. During the year previous to the survey, consumer goods with sustainable brands grew >4% globally, while those without sustainable brands grew <1%.

Large retailers are also driving sustainability by developing internal measurements of the products they re-sell and setting targets for improvements. According to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), 115 organizations representing over $3.3 trillion dollars of spend are requesting environmental data from more than 11,500 global suppliers.

In the USA, YouGov.gov data show that in the past year alone the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds turning to vegetarianism for environmental or welfare reasons has increased from 9 to 19 per cent.

Authentic Sustainability

Authentic sustainability has to incorporated three critical core components.  To be authentically sustainable, you have to be sustainable in all three of the following categories of the whole product lifecycle: supply chain, manufacturing, and end-of-use cycle.

Sustainability starts with the supply chain.  Where do the main building blocks of the ingredients used in your product originate, from the lithosphere, or the biosphere?  Are they derived primarily from oil, or plants?  Products built on plastics that come from petroleum sources derive their carbons from durable carbon sources that were sequestered in the earth but now may become fugitive carbon in the atmosphere.

Products built on materials that come from plant-based sources draw their carbon from the ocean of carbon already existing in the atmosphere.  Use of this source results in no net increase in a carbon available in the biosphere, only the reuse of an existing resource.

Tethis’s superabsorbents carbon molecules predominantly come from plant-starch rather than from petroleum as has been measured by the ASTM D6866 Carbon 14 Test.

William McDonough, author of “Cradle to Cradle”, wrote that “by building urban systems and cultivating closed-loop flows of carbon nutrients, carbon can be recognized as an asset rather than a toxin, and the life-giving carbon cycle can become a model for human designs.”

The second critical core component of authentic sustainability is the impact on the environment during the manufacturing.

How much water is used?  Is some or all of the water used, treated and reused?  What is the nature of the contaminants or co-products recovered during the water treatment process?  Can they be sold or reused in other products?  Is your facility a zero liquid discharge facility?

What is the impact on air quality of your manufacturing process and on the processes of all of your ingredient makers?

How much energy does your manufacturing process use?  How much energy do your suppliers consume when making the components that go into your products?  What is the source of that energy: oil, natural gas, solar, or wind?

Tethis has begun addressing these issues from the inception of our scale-up journey. We have completed a preliminary Screening Level Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) of our manufacturing processes following the methods prescribed by ISO 14040 (ISO, 2006a) and 14044 (ISO, 2006b) in order to identify opportunities for improvement as we scale to commercial scale.

The final critical core component of authentic sustainability has to deal with what happens to the product once it has been used.

 

I prefer to use the term use-cycle instead of lifecycle because once something has been used it should be turned into something new that can be used again. The term lifecycle itself has to do with our understanding of how products die. The term connotes the stages of birth, use or life, death and then burial.  Typically, when people “throw something away”, they assume it disappears into nothingness.  But we know that all it really does is go…away; but it doesn’t disappear.

Making clothing out of Bamboo was once an interesting sustainability story.  However, it was simply using the rayon process to turn the bamboo into synthetic fabric.  It had a sustainable supply chain but not a sustainable manufacturing or end-of-use story. The same can be said today of making polyacrylates out of corn.

As product designers, we have to think about what the components of our product can become when they “go away”.  This means we have to be thinking about reuse, recycling, or composting.

Tethis has performed preliminary biodegradation studies on our superabsorbents using a modified ASTM D5338 method. Our superabsorbents are passed the test within two months.

 

Plant-Based

It has been particularly difficult to find suitable alternatives to synthetic superabsorbent polymers (sodium polyacrylate) in order to make more sustainable diapers and hygiene garments.  These amazing synthetic polymers have been the market for over 40 years and have been critical to the functioning and market success of hygiene products but now there is a more natural option.

Our approach to sustainability begins long before products are created and shipped to customers. For example, our proprietary manufacturing processes allow significant flexibility in sourcing raw materials. This enhances product performance, helps contain costs as well as reduces our carbon footprint.

Cornstarch is ubiquitous in the Americas and China, potato starch in Western Europe, and cassava and tapioca in Southeast Asia; capitalizing on the regional availability of raw materials dramatically reduces the cost and environmental impact of shipping materials around the world. As well as reducing the environmental impact of production and disposal, this flexibility helps hedge against fluctuations in raw material cost and availability, and it insulates consumer product manufacturers from highly volatile petroleum costs.

Tethex is a truly homogeneous material that contains consists of highly renewable carbon content from the biosphere and none of the polyacrylate chemistry traditional SAPs do.

 

Food vs. Industrial Sourcing

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