Fossil fuels are the foundation of countless everyday products ranging from plastics to detergents. Entire industries still depend on fossil fuels and their derivative materials, petrochemicals, but the clean energy and sustainable products movement is starting to change how companies source their raw materials. Origin.Bio, a synthetic biology company, plans to free manufacturers from their petrochemical dependency by co-designing with nature to create more sustainable products. 

Origin.Bio announced today that it has secured $15 million of funding led by EQT Ventures. The company plans to use the funding to expand technology and bring sustainable ingredients to brands all over the world.

Eliminating Our Fossil Fuels Dependency

Most of the products people use today come from petrochemicals, which consume a large amount of energy, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and generate a lot of waste during the production process. However, eliminating the world's dependence on petrochemicals is not a simple process and requires changing how products are made from the beginning of the manufacturing cycle.  

"We are creating a new type of manufacturing company in the biotech world," says Jens Klein, founder and CEO of Origin.Bio. "We can change the world for the better by delivering sustainable ingredients for final products."

To change the world's petrochemical dependency, Origin.Bio is creating raw materials that can serve as drop-in ingredients for a variety of industries. The company is connecting bioengineers with nature to make synthetic microorganisms that can directly replace petrochemical ingredients without requiring any other changes to a manufacturing process. The synthetic microorganisms need less energy and make less waste than traditional chemical industrialization processes.

Building a Sustainable Future

The European Union (EU) wants to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions and become climate neutral by 2050. Achieving these ambitious goals will require an estimated €1 trillion in sustainable investments over the next decade. Klein believes that innovation is the key to becoming climate neutral.

"We are providing an alternative way of producing today's materials. We can create sustainable products with a lower carbon dioxide footprint. And this will give consumers around the globe the opportunity to make our planet better," says Klein.

Origin.Bio is working on three technology platforms that will help bridge the gap between R&D-focused organizations with brands and existing original equipment manufacturer (OEM) manufacturing processes. The first focuses on the fragrance industry and will be important for the beauty and personal care market. The second is looking into lipids to create better naturally derived ingredients that do not have to be processed by the chemical industry. The third is studying performance materials that can be used by multiple industries in manufacturing.

Origin.Bio wants to give companies a single place for many materials, so they do not have to work with a large number of sources to get their raw ingredients. It means that Origin.Bio is focusing on the market first and then creating technology that fixes existing problems.

"We are implementing many feedback loops into our organization from the very beginning. Everyone gets feedback from our pilot plant and the market because it is good for research and development," says Klein.

Europe's commitment to a more sustainable future puts Origin.Bio in the perfect place to find companies that need its products. Klein believes that having Origin.Bio based in Europe also gives it an advantage over startups in the United States or Asia because of European infrastructure. Origin.Bio has access to pilot plants in Europe that make it easy to create ingredients and help companies reach the climate neutral goal by 2050.

Searching for New Possibilities

Researchers have exhausted much of what petrochemicals can make, but biology creates the opportunity to discover new products that the chemical industry cannot produce. The toolbox of biology is still being explored, so materials innovation is in its infancy. Replacing industrial chemicals with ingredients made from biological processes opens up a world of new plastics, paints, detergents, pharmaceuticals, and other products.

Eliminating our need for fossil fuels and petrochemicals is the starting point. Beyond that, we could make products the world has never seen before to improve people's lives. Co-designing with nature to save the planet is only the beginning of what we can accomplish with biology.

Thank you to Lana Bandoim for additional research and reporting in this article. I’m the founder of SynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest.

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