WinCup is a disposable packaging manufacturer, that is located in Atlanta and the company has recently achieved an impressive milestone. This milestone involves successfully replacing two billion virgin plastic straws with their innovative and well-designed phade straws.

These excellent new products were unveiled by WinCup in 2020 and this led to them reaching a milestone of replacing one billion straws in 2023. It only took one more year for the company to increase this number to two billion straws.

This was made possible, once WinCup found their supplier, Danimer Scientific, who are a company based in Georgia. Through research and experimentation, this company has developed a way of producing PHA, with a method that involves microbial fermentation of canola oil. This efficient and effective method is what drew WinCup to the company and since then Danimer Scientific has been WinCup’s supplier.

This brilliantly designed, sustainable phade straw, highlights the importance of using alternative materials, as it is manufactured out of biopolymer polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA). The benefits of this straw include the way this kind of material will entirely biodegrade when it is in marine environments, plus it is also home and industrial compostable.

So far, this straw has proved to be effective and popular within the foodservice industry, as it is an alternative to virgin plastic and it is a solution which answers lots of brands and end-customers wishes to have a more sustainable option available.

On top of the benefits the straw is providing to the food and beverage industry, it has also been discovered by marine scientists that the straw can be used to restore coral reefs, especially in Florida. Similar to the success the straw has seen within the food industry, the straw has also proved successful in helping this marine drive, due to its ability to biodegrade. This is another industry that has caused the innovative product to become more popular.

Furthermore, the team at WinCup recently announced that their next step and most recent achievement was to create the world’s first paper cup which featured a PHA lining. This lining is also 100% marine biodegradable and it has spurred the company onto creating their next idea, which is to create cutlery made from phade PLA.

President and CRO of WinCup, Michael Winters, commented, “We’re extremely proud to reach this milestone, but we’ve only just begun. The world’s plastic waste crisis is vast and will require many solutions. I hope that what we’ve been able to do with phade straws is indicative of the role innovation can play in replacing harmful plastics. We’ve certainly been inspired to explore several other applications using phade technology beyond straws to expand our mission of curbing plastic pollution and look forward to introducing new solutions to the market.”