Canadian biotechnology entrepreneur Luna Yu is on a quest. Her Toronto-based company, Genecis, aims to turn organic waste like apple cores, chicken bones and soiled tissues into valuable materials. Right now, Yu says, green-binnables aren’t reaching their full potential, “which is why organic waste is still getting sent to landfills.”
Canadian municipalities do try to squeeze a little extra value out of the waste before composting by using anaerobic digesters to extract biogas (i.e. gases produced by the breakdown of organic matter without oxygen), which can be burned to generate heat and electricity. Yu interned at a company that did that, and she realized that turning waste into biogas is an “uneconomic way of dealing with it.”
The trick is creating alternatives. Alchemists thought the key was a mythical tool called the philosopher’s stone, which could turn lead into gold. The modern-day equivalent is bacteria, both natural and genetically modified, that can transform simple molecules into more complex chemicals.
Different bacteria can make different chemicals in different ways. To have as many options as possible, Yu got friends to collect bacteria from all over the world. For example, they’d put some lake water in a little vial while on vacation in places like Guatemala and sneak the microbes back to Canada. Yu hopes to expand and improve what the bacteria can do by genetically modifying them (a concept known as synthetic biology).
Genecis’s first product will be premium compostable plastics called PHAs, which are used in things like medical devices. Yu says PHAs can generate seven times more revenue than biogas. Next, they have their eye on ambroxides, which are pricey perfume ingredients that were originally found in the intestines of sperm whales but can now be made synthetically.