ALMIPLAS – Cassava-based, biodegradable plastics

We experience and live the plastic catastrophe: plastic clogs the streets of Paraguay, resulting in severe floods multiple times a year.  Therefore, we are driven to seek an alternative to non-degradable plastics. Our solution is a 100% biodegradable plastic raw material(pellets) based from cassava starch and soybean oil.  ALMIPLAS has been developed to exhibit suitable strength, flexibility, and durability for single-use plastics, but is sourced from local components and biodegrades within months. ALMIPLAS production is commercially competitive with petroleum plastic, and the local production will create jobs and economic growth within Paraguay. This substitute for petroleum-based plastics will result in evolution of the Paraguayan plastic industry, reducing waste dramatically, and will be quickly scalable to all of Latin America. 

Our solution addresses two intertwined problems:

1) The lack of local raw material and 2) the abundance of non-degradable plastics in Paraguayan cities resulting in failures in the local infrastructures.

            The plastic industry in Paraguay represents about $300 million per year, however Paraguay has no oil reserves.  All raw material for plastic products must be imported.  This increases costs, increases the carbon footprint of the plastics, and is an economic burden on the country.  Our solution will provide a local alternative to petroleum-based raw materials by sourcing all components from local, renewable sources, namely, Cassava and Soybean.

            Due to the economic state of the country, water systems (sewage, drainage, runoff, and levees) are inadequate.  Plastic waste clogs many of the runoff ditches and sewage systems in the major cities, resulting in floods following even moderate rain.  In 2018, there were more than 100 days of significant flooding in Asuncion, which is home to more than 2.1 million people.  Each of these days saw economic slowdown, damage to private property and municipal infrastructure, disruption of business and civil services.  These floods also resulted in trash and sewage-contaminated water spreading across the city and creating breeding grounds for mosquitoes.  

Paraguay lacks the resources to implement first world solutions such as widespread recycling and alternatives.  Paraguays population is around 7 million. They are hardworking people who value their country. Around 60% of our young population doesn’t receive education and even a greater percentage of all our citizens didn’t finish highschool. This replicates to the majority of the developing nations in latin America. With that being said, our team doesn’t aim to make people change their habits, but offer a solution that won’t const them to change their lifestyle. Since the economic income for the lower and middle class in parguay is very low, this alternative wont cause an issue when making them switch to starch based plastic since it will cost the same as petroleum bags.

Our solution utilizes state of the art processes and technology to deliver a raw material that is fully compatible with the existing industrial infrastructure to fabricate plastic bags.  The material is made using a controlled polymerization process that combines mandioca starch, soybean-derived oil, and low-heat extrusion in an energy efficient refining process.  The final product is a plastic pellet that can be extruded into plastic bags of multiple colors and thicknesses that biodegrade within months, leaving no microplastics or harmful residues in the environment.

The population we are serving is resistant to change, and the infrastructure required to implement high-tech solutions is years away.  The educational system is one of the least developed in the world, so reeducation campaigns are difficult to implement. Therefore, our solution enables the current infrastructure to provide the population with a biodegradable plastic product that will improve quality of life, reduce pollution, and provide local economic benefit without the need for a change in behavior.

Almiplas was inspired a few years back by Kevin Kumala; the young entrepeneur responsible for inventing the technology behind the cassava bag. Almiplas itself, was developed by our chief science director through its own unique process. After months of research, he was able to come up with a product that can be locally sourced and easily spread across the Latin American market. The beauty behind our product is that it can be applied within already established plastic factories with the infrastructure they already own. This requieres no adtional machinery investment, making the switch from petroleum to bio-based sources more atractive. Also, since it is locally sourced, it would available for coustumers a lot faster. A plastic bag made from our cassava pellets can decompose in a few months compared to a normal polyethylene bag that can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. The process in which our pellets are made is also innovative and eco-friendly. We use a lot less energy than what it takes to produce petrol-based plastics and once formed it produces no harmful waste products.

We would like to expand and be able to supply all of the Paraguayan plastic factories between the next year and a half. Once properly established in our home country, we want to start operating in our neighbor countries like Brazil, Argentina, Peru, etc. Our end goal is to have almiplas spread out through all of Latin America and the Caribbean as soon as possible. We know pollution is an urgent matter, that why we need BID's help, so we can impact more lives faster.

Right now, our main issues are financial. We need the capital to expand and do more research on how to make our product have more aplications. The money would also be use for marketing campaings and promoting the cassava bag. Make people demand that petrol plastic is no longer a thing in their lives. Our idea is not only to have a biodegrable product, but also to be recongized as a propulsor of sustainable ideology in developing countries. We also want to patent our technology as soon as we can, we know that process can be very tedious but that wont stop us from reachig our end goal. We just want to make sure we are properly covered and ready to operate in new countries once the oportunity arrives.

We have four people at head of the project. We plan on hiring more people to help us in the process.

With a comprehensive group of complimentary teammates all passionate for the same goal, our team consists of 4 people:

PhD in biomedical engineering, Michael Kammer, has 7 years of experience in research and development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville TN. He is currently researching and working on early lung cancer detection

Marketing and communications specialist, Alexia Barrail, has 11 years of experience developing and implementing digital and print marketing strategy. While her experience includes both for and nonprofit organizations, she is currently working with commercial real estate firms in the US.

Business student, Alexander Barrail, is finishing his last semester undergraduate degree in comercial engineering and has 4 years of business admin experience under his belt in Asuncion Paraguay. He has also completed the Oxford university summer program in environmental science and international relations.

Last but not least, Isabella Sacarello, is also finishing her undergraduate degree in business administration, and has 2 years of experience working in Human Resources for a local company in Asuncion Paraguay. Isabella is also an alumni of the Young Investors Organization where she has completed 2 of their business programs.

We will be selling virgin plastic material to established factories for use in blown-film extrusion to create plastic bags.  The locally sourced raw material, reduced energy requirements, and elimination of import tariffs enable us to be economically competitive with petroleum-based plastics.  Our cost-to-produce on a per-ton of plastic basis is estimated to be less than 80% of the commercial import cost of petroleum plastic, leaving room for profit while still being cost-effective for the customer.

Our upfront costs are based upon buying and fabricating the industrial-scale equipment required to ramp up production of our product and 6 months of wages and raw materials as a runway. Our expected monthly operating cost is based upon an average of 5-year price history for our constituent raw materials, rent and utilities for a space large enough to set up the factory in Asuncion, Paraguay's industrial district, and the workforce needed to run the production while paying our baseline employees at 1.5 times the minimum wage plus health insurance.  Our expected revenue is based upon the 5-year average for the price of imported petroleum-based plastic raw material, minus delivery costs.  The total monthly production volume is based upon estimates of the total throughput of a single factory that makes plastic bags from petroleum plastic (of which 30 exist in the greater Asuncion metropolitan area).  With this startup cost, production cost, revenue, and volume estimates, we are projecting a positive return on investment (ROI) within 6 months in the best-case scenario and within 3 years in the worst-case scenario.

After hitting this positive ROI time-point, future profits will be put into expanding our production volume and expanding our bio-derived product portfolio through development of new starch-based polymer blends.

Winning the Rethink Plastics Challenge will be the catalyst that our solution needs to leave the prototype stage and enter into a pilot period.  Our product, Ambiplas, is ready for industrial scale production and we have several interested buyers, but we currently lack the capital needed to establish a pilot-scale industrial operation.  Additionally, the partnerships provided through the Rethink Plastics Challenge would enable expansion of our business model to a greater portion of Latin America and to enable the transition away from petroleum for other single-use plastics.  We also wish to use the Rethink Plastics Challenge as an opportunity to become more involved in the environmentally-conscious community of Latin America and strengthen our ties to the other groups participating.

Organizations with resources for polymer science research and development.  Our current solution is viable for replacing grocery bags, but our goal is to replace all single-use plastics in Latin America with bio-derived, bio-disposable plastic.  In particular, the development of plastics suitable for food packaging would be catalyzed by partnership with teams that are already exploring these options.