Okosix Will Show Its Biodegradable Plastic At Techcrunch Disrupt 2025

Healthcare is awash successful single-use plastics. In U.S. healthcare accommodation alone, more than 2,800 tons of integrative packaging and products are thrown retired each day. 

Few group are much alert of this than Eddie Yu. Early successful nan pandemic, Yu founded a institution that made disposable masks. One day, his niece was pinch him while he was sorting recycling, and she asked him whether his disguise was besides recyclable.

“I told her that really we can’t recycle nan mask,” he told TechCrunch. “She conscionable interrupted maine and said, ‘Oh, past you make a batch of trash each day.’”

The small girl’s words stuck pinch Yu, and aft trading nan disguise institution successful 2021, he group retired to make amends.

In an effort to tame healthcare’s azygous usage integrative problem, Yu’s caller company, Okosix, has developed a caller bio-based, biodegradable polymer. Okosix is portion of Startup Battlefield, and it will beryllium presenting astatine TechCrunch Disrupt later this period successful San Francisco. 

Okosix blends various compounds including cellulose, chitosan derived from crustacean shells, wax, and a proprietary material. The consequence is cheaper than polylactic acerb (PLA), a wide utilized biodegradable plastic, pinch functionality that is “the aforesaid aliases moreover amended than PLA,” Yu said.

Among plastics, nan word “biodegradability” is often misused, Yu said. Some require very circumstantial conditions to decompose, while others simply autumn isolated into micro- aliases nanoplastics. 

“We’ve sewage world certifications to beryllium that nan worldly is wholly gone successful six months,” Yu said. 

Okosix is starting pinch look masks, but it plans to besides make surgical gowns, diapers, and sanitary napkins, Yu said. “We want to usage a safe material, non-plastic, to switch fossil plastics for disposable products.”

Though nan institution has yet to execute a general lifecycle analysis, Yu said that Okosix’s worldly should person a c footprint that’s 90% little than that of polypropylene, a widely-used single-use plastic.

Okosix sells its worldly to 3rd parties, which past move it into various products. “At nan moment, our business exemplary is for illustration Gore-tex,” Yu said. “We don’t make nan vanished products, but we make nan layer, we make nan earthy materials, and past we activity pinch companies for illustration 3M.” He added that branding could go a important portion of nan business, akin to Gore-tex.

The startup has raised $2.3 million, including investments from nan founders and different angel investors.

Hear much from Okosix and dozens of different startups firsthand, participate successful valuable workshops, and make lasting connections astatine this year’s Disrupt, taking spot October 27 to 29 successful San Francisco.