One startup is looking to provide eco-friendly plant-based alternatives to petroleum-based chemicals in hygiene and cleaning products, GeekWire reported — and it's off to a great start with a recent influx of $3.5 million in investor funding, plus $400,000 in new grants.
The name to watch out for is Sironix Renewables, a Seattle company that was spun off from the University of Minnesota in 2016. Using soybeans and coconuts at its 3,700-square-foot research and development facility, the company is ready to make waves with its innovative ingredients.
"Consumers care about a few things, but first and foremost, they care about performance and safety, and those are surprisingly hard for product brands to fulfill," said Christoph Krumm, co-founder and CEO of Sironix, per GeekWire. "We have this new ingredient that enables a great environmental profile, great product safety, and it doesn't sacrifice on performance."
The ingredient in question is a surfactant — an additive for hygiene products that makes them foamy and helps get rid of oils. Surfactants are used in shampoos and laundry products, among other things.
Sironix's Eosix Surfactant is especially good at low temperatures and in hard water, meaning water with a high mineral content. That's great news because hard water often reduces the effectiveness of soaps and cleaners.
Meanwhile, the production of Eosix causes about half as much heat-trapping air pollution as the production of a similar surfactant from petroleum, so it's much better for the environment.
And that's just the first of Sironix's offerings. While it has started with personal care products, it hopes to keep developing new safe and healthy chemicals that will allow it to branch out into cleaners, industrial chemicals, and "leave on products" like moisturizers and sunscreen. All of these advancements would make it easier for buyers to make healthy choices for themselves that are also responsible choices for the environment.
"We're developing new chemical processes that go up against incumbent technologies that have existed for decades and have large-scale production around the world," Krumm said, per GeekWire. "There are inherently challenges with developing new technology, so it's exciting to see that whole picture come together."
Other companies are also looking for greener ways to get the chemicals needed for the wide range of products people use daily. Deep Blue BioTech is engineering algae to produce some chemicals for skin care, and scientists are also working on replacing petroleum in medicine with a pine tree extract.
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