Chile’s Atacama Desert is known as one of the best places in the world to look up at the stars — but what do we see when we look down via satellites? A giant pile of unwanted clothing from around the world, growing by tens of thousands of tons each year. The manufacturing industry responsible for creating these non-recyclable materials also accounts for about 31 percent of global carbon emissions and uses more than half of the world’s energy sources.

Eliminating this kind of pollution and the associated greenhouse gas emissions that accelerate climate change is one of Atacama Biomaterials’ driving missions. The Massachusetts-based company uses an AI-scaled system to engineer and manufacture sustainable and cost-effective alternatives to plastic and other carbon-intensive materials using diverse, local biomass — renewable resources derived from plants.

“The world has been focused on working with inorganic raw materials because they’re easier…But now, with AI and machine learning, we are finally able to handle the complexity of working with bio-based materials.” — Paloma Gonzalez-Rojas, Atacama Co-founder

A recipe for sustainability

Material manufacturing is like cooking on a massive scale. To create a material like plastic, you must follow the correct recipe using the right ingredients (or raw materials). But, unlike cooking, making raw material substitutions in the traditional manufacturing process is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

“Most material manufacturers have to use fixed formulations or recipes for their products in order to get consistent material properties, forcing them to use high volume commodity raw materials, which are often expensive and bad for the environment,” says Steven Kaye, a scientific advisor for Atacama and Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC-Berkley.

Using AI and machine learning, Atacama is redefining what’s possible in material manufacturing. They can deliver material formulations tailored to the sustainable raw materials available near a manufacturing site without compromising their customer’s desired performance specs. All of this is done 10 times faster than a traditional formulation process. By managing variability and complexity efficiently with AI, they can optimize their materials’ performance, cost, and impact, then scale as needed.

“Replacing plastics with equivalent-performance materials made from lower cost and [lower] environmental impact raw materials would have a huge impact on global CO2 emissions,” says Kaye. “This has been a major goal of environmental chemistry for many years. Atacama’s ability to rapidly optimize and take advantage of local raw materials at the point of manufacturing has the potential to achieve that goal.”

The proof is in the packaging

Atacama’s initial product, Woodpack (WPk), is an entirely novel plastic film alternative created using regional recycled fibers through a uniquely sustainable manufacturing process.

“[Woodpack – WPk] has the strength, durability, and translucency of plastic, but all the environmental impact and cost-effectiveness of paper. This is the result of our unique manufacturing process that modernizes the paper-making techniques, delivering exactly the kind of materials that the industry needs today.” — Jose Tomas Dominguez, Atacama’s Co-Founder and CTO.

WPk is recyclable and biodegradable, and it can be effectively used for packaging in industries ranging from retail and food to health care and pharmaceuticals and beyond.

“Woodpack is truly a fantastic material. … [It] performs similarly to plastic and outperforms key specifications of paper. At the same time, Woodpack is recognizable as different from those two materials. Other compostable plastics feel exactly like plastic, making it challenging for consumers to sort them, generating cross-contamination on the different waste management streams.” — Oliver Rattin, global packaging technology director at McCormick & Co., food manufacturer and partner of Atacama.

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Optimizing to expand applications

Using a similar AI-scaled system, Atacama continues to optimize and expand WPk applications. The system recently proved that WPk can withstand low and freezing temperatures needed for safe transportation and storage of temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals and food. Unlike paper, it can be coated with aluminum and heat-sealed, plastic-free, providing an all-encompassing plastic alternative.

“This is a breakthrough because all of the packaging that we use for food and most for pharmaceutical products has an aluminum coating,” Gonzalez-Rojas and Dominguez explain. That’s the silver you see on the inside of a bag of chips or a medical device pouch. 

“Atacama’s platform has significant potential for broader applications, extending its use to optimize biomass across various industries,” says Svafa Grönfeldt, MIT faculty director of MITdesignx business accelerator and a mentor to Atacama since they participated in the accelerator in 2022. “This wide applicability makes Atacama’s work immensely valuable in today’s landscape, offering scalable solutions for efficiency and sustainability.”

Eco-friendly, resourceful production

Atacama’s system is not only good for the environment but also offers businesses a more reliable and adaptable supply chain, one that can keep up with industry changes and curb disruptions from global challenges like climate change or a pandemic like COVID-19. 

“Their innovative approach to material production, utilizing regionally available resources, ensures supply chain decarbonization and consistent, high-quality protective materials on demand,” says Gheorghe Cojocariu, associate director of design for sustainability at Becton Dickinson (BD), a global medical technology company. “A strategic shift to Atacama’s materials stands to significantly strengthen BD’s efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its product portfolio with a broad global reach and impact.”

Scaling for global solutions

WPk is just the beginning. Atacama plans to use its AI-scaled approach to develop an unlimited variety of sustainable materials using ingredients available by the ton everywhere in the world, today. “We are creating a new precedent for manufacturing enhanced by AI,” Gonzalez-Rojas says. “We see it as a way to capitalize on local or regional resources that also gives access to different [sustainable] materials and processes, and creates tech-manufacturing jobs.”

The company’s next steps include strategically scaling manufacturing capabilities and research facilities in Santiago in Chile and Massachusetts in the US.

“Over the next decade, Atacama has the potential to become a pivotal force in the global sustainable materials market,” Grönfeldt says. “With increasing regulatory demands and shifting consumer preferences towards eco-friendly products, Atacama’s innovative solutions are perfectly positioned to drive industry change.” 

Through these innovative solutions, Atacama aims to reduce CO2 emissions in manufacturing by two gigatons by 2035 by replacing polluting plastics and all carbon intensive materials. Atacama achieves such reduction with their electrified manufacturing at low temperature, AI-optimization and regional production on demand.

“We cannot afford [to act slowly] right now because of climate change. We have an immediate and practical solution for this crisis,” Gonzalez-Rojas and Dominguez say.

It’s an ambitious undertaking, but Atacama and its partners have many reminders, like the Atacama Desert, that their goals not only can, but must, be as revolutionary as the technology behind them.