“We develop and produce biodegradable packaging,” said Bioelements CEO and founder Ignacio Parada. “The idea is that all of our products will break down into food for microorganisms and fungi from three to 20 months.”

Parada said his company has made several alliances in the past with locations worldwide, including a recent partnership with Clemson University.

He said they entered the company into the U.S. market two years ago and decided to partner with MSU because they needed a “very good alliance with a top university in the states.”

“We can see if our products are not only being certified by third parties and biodegradable in perfect conditions but also in imperfect conditions,” said Parada. “What we do with MSU is try to test our products and to see if they are fit to be biodegradable in conditions that are the ones that we can find in the U.S.”

Rafael Auras, a professor and the Amcor Endowed Chair in packaging sustainability at MSU’s School of Packaging, plays an important role in MSU’s side of the partnership.

Auras said he has been working in biodegradable studies for 20 years. He said Bioelements reached out to MSU in hopes of expanding into the U.S. market for “biodegradable, bio-based polymers,” or materials made from renewable resources.

He said they are doing “validation assessments” of the materials in the on-campus labs. He said they are finding the correct properties for biodegradation, and Bioelements has the technology to identify them.

One of the materials undergoing assessment is Bio E-8i film, a plastic-based material with biodegradable components.

Packaging engineer at Bioelements Agustin Marletta said they provided MSU with this material. He is the project manager for this project.

Marletta said MSU has the facilities to test the biodegradation process and the material viability in a controlled setting.

“From the company side, we design these particular formulations,” said Marletta. “We have over 30 different formulations, and what we do is we design them from scratch, and then we test with universities or technological centers.”

They anticipate this research to last six months. Marletta said this combats the problems with plastic pollution since plastic takes more than 400 years to start the degradation process. 

Parada said the struggle with plastic pollution is large in the U.S. and is the number one consumer of plastic per capita in the world.

Auras said MSU is well linked within the packaging industry, which offers many benefits to MSU.

“It helps on different levels," said Auras. "One, is it exposes our students to the technology that is there. Another is to help us to move our technologies to a stage that we can develop different types of packaging systems with a partnership, and then also in part of the location component that we can have with them.”

Environmentally, Marletta said biodegradable materials help in reducing carbon emissions. Changing to biodegradable materials that are produced and converted into plastics causes a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Auras said waste can then be composted instead of entering landfills since landfills produce methane, one of the more potent greenhouse gasses.

“We are super excited about working together with MSU,” said Parada. “We think there's a great potential on getting a lot of knowledge that is inside of the universities that we can try to test if our products pass or don't pass.”