UrthPact biodegradable coffee pod

Posted on: 2016-08-16 9:55 AM

For CEO Paul Boudreau, good is delivering a product that customer’s want, but great is being able to develop a product with the power to change the world for the better.
 
When he turned 50 years old. He had an epiphany that he'd spent 25 years of his life in plastics and had done a lot of good things with plastic." Boudreau said.
 
His Leominster company, Innovative Mold Solutions, had designed and manufactured an array of products -- components for night-vision goggles for defense contracts, portions of a device used to efficiently count cancer cells through blood testing -- but the bulk of this work was beginning to weigh on Boudreau's mind.
 
Things began to change in 2012 when Boudreau was contacted by San Francisco Bay Coffee, a company looking to create its own version of the K-Cup for Keurig coffeemakers, but one that is completely compostable.
 
What followed was the development of the environmentally friendly OneCup but also the creation of UrthPact, a spinoff of Innovative Mold Solutions devoted to finding green solutions to plastics manufacturing.
 
The OneCup was UrthPact's first product, and it marked a venture into using sugar-based plants like corn, sugar beets and sugarcane to create a less harmful plastic substitute.
 
"The sugar from those plants goes through what's almost like a fermentation process before it becomes polymer lactic acid and that becomes a material that, when solidified, behaves like plastic," Boudreau said.
 
Much like plastic, this plant-based material can be modified to become more durable, flexible, or, in the case of the OneCup, heat resistant.
 
Unlike recyclable products, which can be processed into new materials, or biodegradable products, which will gradually break down over time, the OneCups developed by UrthPact break down over the course of 90 days and spread nutrients back into the soil as they decompose.
 
Everything about the small cups -- the plastic-like ring that holds it together, the seal over the lid, the mesh that holds in the coffee -- is all compostable, including each cup's individual packaging.
 
It's been more than a year now that the OneCups with components designed in Leominster have been sold in stores across the country and, according to San Francisco Bay Coffee spokesman Jim Zelinski, over 1 billion have already been purchased.
 
 Paul Boudreau, president and CEO of UrthPact, stands next to a box of pod rings, a component used in the manufacturing of compostable OneCups. Sentinel and
Paul Boudreau, president and CEO of UrthPact, stands next to a box of pod rings, a component used in the manufacturing of compostable OneCups.
 
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"Based on those numbers, we estimate that through the purchases of our customers we've prevented 6.6 million pounds of plastic waste from going into landfills," he said.
 
While using products made from compostable materials is comparatively more expensive than plastic, Zelinski said that San Francisco Bay Coffee placed greater importance on ensuring its products had minimal negative impact on the environment.
 
"We believe that consumers want their coffee to be as green as possible," he said. "When we went into this, we wanted to ensure great quality, great taste and great price, but we also really wanted to make sure that we weren't part of this ongoing environmental nightmare."
 
Boudreau estimates that working with plant sugars versus more traditional oil-based plastics increases production costs by as much as 20 percent, but it hasn't stopped the company from looking into using their new process for other products as well.
 
UrthPact is using the same materials to develop other disposable items typically made of plastic, including cutlery and water bottles.
 
While other companies use similar processes to create non-plastic products, Boudreau believes they pale in comparison to the capabilities of his own company.
 
"We have seen other products out there. Most of what we've seen have come from oversees," he said. "We have seen these products, but they're from companies that don't have the same production capacity we have here."
 
As far as city Economic Development Coordinator Lisa Marrone knows, UrthPact is the only plastics company in Leominster moving this far away from traditional manufacturing techniques.
 
"I have not heard or seen or talked to anyone doing anything similar to what they've been doing," she said.
 
Because of this particular innovation, Marrone said she hopes the work being done at UrthPact will encourage more people to work in local manufacturing and show that innovation is not uncommon in the Plastic City.
 
"We're extremely proud of our manufacturing here and I think it's improves the image Leominster has on a global scale," she said. "When you see this company making a product unlike any other, it's really amazing."
 
To cut back on the carbon emissions that would be created by shipping all of the OneCups from Massachusetts to California, Boudrea said that UrthPact has based much of its production close to San Francisco Bay Coffee's California facilities.
 
Moving forward, UrthPact is continuing to look for other companies that want greener products and are willing to put environmentally consciousness over finding the cheapest production costs.
 
"We have already been approached by lots of different new customers asking if we can do all of these kinds of projects," Boudreau said. "There are a lot of companies looking for solutions beyond conventional plastics."