Reducing carbon footprint with bioplastics from organic waste

Entrepreneur Do Hong Hanh, Co-founder, CEO Buyo Bioplastics: Reducing carbon footprint with bioplastic from organic waste

Choosing the solution of producing bioplastics from agricultural waste, businesswoman Do Hong Hanh hopes to contribute to reducing carbon footprint and aims to make Buyo Bioplastics one of the leading bioplastic suppliers in Vietnam and the world.

Businesswoman Do Hong Hanh was awarded the Techfest Vietnam 2023 Champion Cup by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

New solution

Bioplastic is no longer a new material, but has gradually become familiar in many markets. However, entrepreneur Do Hong Hanh shared that currently, the raw materials for bioplastic production are mainly from starch (rice, cassava...) and in the long term will affect food security. In addition, the limitation of products made from these ingredients is that they are not very durable and easily crumble when exposed to water.

CEO Do Hong Hanh and the Buyo Bioplastics team have come up with a new, more optimal solution by choosing raw materials from agricultural waste such as beer residue, sugarcane bagasse... to produce bioplastic.

Buyo Bioplastics products maintain the advantage of bioplastics by utilizing abundant and common organic waste sources in Vietnam such as the residue collected after the beer production process, or some other types of residue in the agricultural processing industry as input materials. The company selects strains of decomposing bacteria, combining biological fermentation secrets to link different types of natural fibers and biopolymers together into a composite material suitable for specific applications.

Buyo Bioplastics' processes of heat pressing, molding, and film blowing... do not use chemicals, helping to create products that are less burdensome to the environment.

When doing business, I have never felt disadvantaged or pressured because I am a woman.

- Businesswoman Do Hong Hanh

In particular, Buyo Bioplastics products can be completely biodegraded in natural conditions, without the need for incineration, just buried in the ground and will completely decompose after about 1 year, instead of about 500 years like conventional plastic. This helps reduce organic waste released into the environment, minimizing greenhouse gases. In addition, during the production process, Buyo Bioplastics also focuses on using renewable energy and reusing water.

Before choosing raw materials from organic waste to produce bioplastics, CEO Do Hong Hanh and the Buyo Bioplastics team conducted experiments with many raw materials, such as fruit peels, spoiled fruits... After the testing process, the research team found that organic waste from pulp is the most suitable source of raw materials, because it can provide a stable quantity, uniform quality, no need to classify, no impurities, helping the industrial production process to be standardized and cost-optimized.

“Creating a product in the lab is very easy, other raw materials can also be used, but to apply it to industrial production, more aspects need to be considered,” Ms. Hanh explained.

Efforts to accelerate

Buyo Bioplastics aims to become one of the leading enterprises in the bioplastic market not only in Vietnam, but also in the world . Businesswoman Do Hong Hanh shared that to realize this goal, Buyo Bioplastics will continuously approach and expand the market.

In addition, businesses also actively participate in startup acceleration programs, such as the Global 100+ Global Accelerator program organized by four giant consumer goods manufacturers (Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coca-Cola, Colgate-

Palmolive and Unilever) to seek technology startups capable of solving the growing waste problem in Asia; HyperScale 2023 program (Singapore); SK Startup Fellowship 2023 (Korea)...

Through these programs, Buyo Bioplastics not only learns and accumulates experience, but also has the opportunity to approach many large and potential customers. Currently, Buyo Bioplastics has a number of pilot contracts to develop products for businesses such as Mondelez Company (USA), Thai Wah Company (Thailand), specializing in instant noodle production, Tessellation Company (Hong Kong), specializing in fabric fiber production...

The female CEO expects that cooperation with multinational corporations will help Buyo Bioplastics' revenue grow impressively in 2024, reaching about 2 million USD, 20 times higher than in 2023.

In addition, the Buyo Bioplastics team will make continuous efforts to approach customers and promote trade in large markets with strict environmental protection requirements, such as the US and Europe.

“Bioplastic products using circular economy production methods are extremely attractive to corporations, in the context that many industries are under great pressure to reduce their carbon footprint,” said Ms. Hanh.

However, in addition to minimizing environmental and social impacts, products need to have reasonable prices to attract many customers.

Frankly speaking, the price of Buyo products is still quite high compared to conventional petroleum-based plastics, but CEO Do Hong Hanh also said that the price can compete with packaging products made from paper and pressed sugarcane. In particular, Buyo's bioplastics can compete with other popular bioplastics such as PLA (a lactic acid-based plastic made from biomass such as industrial sugarcane, sugar beets, corn, cassava... and can be biodegradable).

“With a large enough volume, our production cost is only 50-60% compared to PLA,” Ms. Hanh confidently said.

Buyo Bioplastics is conducting trial production at its factory in Cu Chi district (HCMC) with an output of about 10 tons of bioplastic per month, applied to soft packaging such as film, bags... and hard plastics such as trays, tableware, cups, jars, bottles...

CEO Do Hong Hanh revealed that in the near future, the company plans to expand the factory's scale by 10 times, producing about 100 tons of bioplastic per month and applying it more diversely in plastic products for medical, cosmetic, and food use.

In the long term, Buyo aims to apply bioplastics in industry and further provide a variety of biomaterials instead of just being limited to bioplastics.

“Our long-term goal is to provide solutions for biological materials and raw materials, contributing to solving the problem of plastic waste pollution in particular and environmental pollution in general,” Ms. Hanh shared.

Promoting women's advantages

Before becoming Co-founder and CEO of Buyo Bioplastics, entrepreneur Do Hong Hanh was Chief Representative of Ban Viet Securities Investment Fund Management Joint Stock Company, economic growth expert at USAID Vietnam, country representative of the Asian Competitiveness Institute in Vietnam, and Business Development Director at Esquel Group.

Having worked in many positions, she wanted to try her hand at more challenging jobs. Realizing that plastic waste pollution is one of the biggest challenges facing countries, and the ban on single-use plastic products in many countries also opens up great business opportunities, in September 2022, businesswoman Do Hong Hanh and her high school classmate - PhD in environmental engineering Trinh Hoa founded Buyo Bioplastics Joint Stock Company (Buyo Bioplastics).

“Buyo was founded with the dual goal of solving the problem of plastic waste and taking advantage of this potential market opportunity,” Ms. Hanh shared.

For CEO Do Hong Hanh, Buyo Bioplastics is both a beginning and a journey. The extensive experience and business relationships built up before have become powerful tools to support her in her new job, especially in a field that, according to the businesswoman, requires a certain level of maturity and “real-life” experience to be successful.

“My start-up was much easier than when I had no experience. Not only to make money, I also wanted to find new things to explore myself more, to test myself in new and more challenging fields,” said the businesswoman.

Sharing with Dau Tu Newspaper on the occasion of International Women's Day March 8, Ms. Hanh confided that when doing business, she has never felt disadvantaged or pressured because she is a woman, because customers are always more interested in the products, technological solutions of the business, the capacity of the person providing those solutions...

According to Ms. Hanh, women even have certain advantages in business. Women have the ability to listen and understand very well, combined with sharp intuition, which will be a "powerful weapon" in negotiating and persuading customers. Besides, with a less competitive nature, always wanting to achieve many benefits for all parties, female entrepreneurs are somewhat less decisive, but can solve the problem of long-term cooperation.

“Women have a high level of determination, perseverance, the ability to withstand pressure and multitask. These are all advantages for women in work and business. In my opinion, we should focus on promoting these advantages, instead of just looking at the limitations and prejudices,” said businesswoman Do Hong Hanh.

Established in September 2022, after only a year of operation, but thanks to its orientation in line with the green development trend and a methodical production and business strategy, Buyo Bioplastics has achieved many remarkable achievements such as Champion of Techfest Vietnam 2023, winning a prize worth 15,000 USD at AB InBev's 100+ Accelerator competition, and being committed to support by Antler Fund (Singapore) from the idea incubation stage to maturity...

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