Algenesis

Algenesis makes polyurethane from plant oils that biodegrades, and makes it as a monomer that drops into the polyurethane plants already operating worldwide. Polyurethane is in foams, coatings, and molded parts throughout the built world, it is made from petroleum, and it does not break down. It sheds microplastics for as long as it exists, which is indefinitely.

A biodegradable polymer only matters if it performs like the one it replaces and costs about the same, because no manufacturer will accept a worse part to feel better about the material. Algenesis is built to that constraint: same performance, same production line, and at the end of its life the material is food for microbes instead of fragments in an ocean. Plastics are a chemistry problem that the industry has spent decades routing around with recycling schemes. Changing the molecule is the version that ends it.