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From microplastic contamination in our food supply, to endless plastic ending up in landfill our dependence on oil-based materials poses a major challenge. Climate Curious speaks to a bacteria trainer who has developed a very promising solution to this problem. 2025 TED Fellow Patricia Ayma Maldonado trains powerful bacteria to synthesise completely natural and biodegradable plastics, offering a regenerative alternative to fossil-fuel-based polymers. A bioplastic that matches conventional plastic in performance and versatility. Recorded live at TED 2025.

Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston

00:00 Introduction to Climate Quickies
00:48 Meet the bacteria trainer
01:49 The science behind eco-friendly plastics
04:37 The business model and impact
07:14 Future vision and applications
10:26 Conclusion

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:00] Maryam Pasha: Welcome to Climate Quickies Bite-sized nuggets of Climate Goodness. From our TEDx London experts in under five minutes

[00:00:08] Ben Hurst: In this week’s climate, curious, we are talking about what you might think is a bit of a paradox, eco-friendly plastics. Whilst at TED 2025, climate Curious co-host Marion Pasha, sat down with Ted.

[00:00:21] Ben Hurst: Fellow and co-founder of VEnvirotech, Patricia Ayma Maldonado. She’s been training bacteria to synthesise [00:00:30] all natural plastics in a way that’s completely biodegradable. Let’s head over to bacteria trainer, Patricia, to hear more about this exciting opportunity to finally kick the can on single use plastics.

[00:00:43] Ben Hurst: Stay curious.

[00:00:48] Meet the bacteria trainer

[00:00:48] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: So I am a bacteria trainer that is training bacteria to produce the plastic that takes care of the planet.

[00:00:56] Maryam Pasha: Okay. A bacteria trainer, I mean, that’s just, I wanna unpack every word in [00:01:00] that sentence. Yeah. But what’s interesting as I was finding out more about you in your work is that you have a very personal.

[00:01:06] Maryam Pasha: Connection to this work. Yeah. From childhood and, yeah. And do you mind just telling us a little bit about that? Like, like your origin story?

[00:01:13] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: I was born with underdeveloped Bronte and I spent my childhood with my parents at the doctors, uh, when I was sick was due to bacteria. So bacteria were really hurting me so much.

[00:01:23] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: It was a really bad thing for me. But then I grew up, I went to high school and [00:01:30] I met two other students that said me that they were like. Using bacteria for producing proteins, for solving hunger in the world. And from that moment, I knew that I wanted to become a bacteria trainer and do something big with them.

[00:01:42] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Right.

[00:01:43] Maryam Pasha: A bacteria trainer. I have to admit, I have never heard this before. Will you tell us more?

[00:01:48] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Yeah.

[00:01:49] The science behind eco-friendly plastics

[00:01:49] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: So basically I, I have a group of bacteria that are super powerful. They are capable of producing ab bio, the weevil plastic, just as we overeat and we get fat. The same process for bacteria. They overeat and they get fat, and what do they eat?

[00:02:04] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: They can eat so many things, but what I do that is amazing is to prepare for them. A very tasty organic waste. Amazing. Such as, for example, when we produce beer, yeah. We have the leftover span yeast, for example. Yes. I prepare this waste and I give it to the bacteria. They like a lot, by the way, and they produce this, by the way, all plastic that is.

[00:02:28] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: The internal reserve, the [00:02:30] fat that I’ve seen, I’ve said before. So this fat has the same properties as petrol based plastic. So I train bacteria to do it better. Wow. But they can just accumulate 60, 80% of their body and they can just be the best at that. So they, they get

[00:02:45] Maryam Pasha: fatter on this delicious stuff.

[00:02:48] Maryam Pasha: Yeah. They create this waste that is, or this fat that is like plastic. Yeah. What happens? It is plastic. It’s plastic. It is

[00:02:55] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: organic plastic. Look, I have bring you like.

[00:02:58] Maryam Pasha: And now, and now I’m gonna tell you, you’re gonna have to go [00:03:00] on our social channels to see this, but you are really, this is really a plastic bottle.

[00:03:03] Maryam Pasha: Like Yeah, it is a plastic bottle. This is a bottle. It’s like, it is like every bottle that you would have in your bathroom. It is soft, it is flexible. And this is made from bacteria? Yeah. That has, that has eaten in, gotten fat.

[00:03:16] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: And this created plastic. Yeah. So it is a plastic that is, uh, really similar to conventional based plastics.

[00:03:22] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Okay. And also we can just, uh, use it in the same machines as the petrol based plastic is already being used. Right. So it is a perfect alternative [00:03:30] because in one month we can assure that 90% of this plastic is eliminated. It is degradating in the environment. Biodegraded.

[00:03:37] Maryam Pasha: So what happens is if you, if you, so you, you make it and then if you throw it away, it biodegrades.

[00:03:43] Maryam Pasha: Yeah, it

[00:03:43] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: biodegrades it Is it, uh, uh, it is food for microorganism. Okay. Again, so it is, it goes to the environment and it transforming to natural components. And so it’s, so this is truly circular. This is a truly circular economy. We, we work with AgriFood [00:04:00] companies. They give us, they eat organic wastes and we transform it into these plastics.

[00:04:04] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Yeah. Amazing. I’m actually kind of a bit blown away. Yeah, it is. Do you have this reaction? It’s mind blowing. Do you have this reaction? A lot. Yeah. So many people ask me, how do this bacteria do it? Do you kill the bacteria? Uh, whatever. Let me take, let me, let me tell your plastic. Oh, I, it is something like, it is like magic, but it’s not, it’s so natural.

[00:04:25] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: I have to ask, how did you guys figure this out? So these bacteria [00:04:30] are studied since 1978. Okay? But no one were applying this type of, this business model, this type of model.

[00:04:37] The business model and impact

[00:04:37] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: So I discovered that bacteria while I was studying at university. I fell in love, like I was obsessed. And then we build with our co-founder, we build like a business model based.

[00:04:48] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: On that companies having the organic waste could take real value with our proposal right then for sure. We develop our own technology. We have our own technology for doing that. We have. [00:05:00] A big know-how in preparing the organic waste. We have very super powerful bacterias in our collection for sure. Yes.

[00:05:07] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: But we came up with this business model that was really well accepted in the environment, right? And from that, we take the idea. Right now we are 30 people. We are a big company. Love it. With 50 million investment. That is amazing. How,

[00:05:22] Maryam Pasha: like how long does it take to produce like a plastic bottle like that

[00:05:25] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: from the starting point to the, when we have the sand, the white [00:05:30] sand, that is the bioplastic.

[00:05:30] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: You have to imagine like a white sand. This part of the process takes 24 hours. Wow. Yeah. That’s fast. And then with this sun, we formulate it and we produce the plastic. It’s quite fast. That’s very fast. Yeah. This is really fast because the bacteria work continuously producing, producing that plastic. It’s just as a water waste system treatment.

[00:05:50] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: You know? There we have very powerful bacteria cleaning water.

[00:05:53] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.

[00:05:53] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: All the time. So this is just the same.

[00:05:55] Maryam Pasha: Right. What’s fascinating to me is that you said that we’ve [00:06:00] known about this bacteria for decades. Yeah. And, but we’ve not. Applied it in this way. Yeah. Is your background science technology? Like what is your background?

[00:06:08] Maryam Pasha: I am bio technology. An environmental engineer. Yeah. Yeah, so, so as a scientist, as an engineer, I guess I’m just curious to know, it must have been, was it surprising? Was it that this technology existed and it was not being, this knowledge existed, it was not being applied in this way? Yeah.

[00:06:23] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Kind of self surprising be.

[00:06:25] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: But it’s quite understandable because, uh, biotechnology is really risky. It [00:06:30] is, uh, sometimes hard because from 10 things you do. Nine are wrong, nine are mistakes, man, nine are, so it’s quite, you need bigger investment. So it’s quite understandable that you cannot just see that type of innovations outside so easily.

[00:06:48] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: We have reactors, I don’t know how to say it, 20,000 leaders that it’s not too much, but we can go to 100,000 liters reactors for producing that type of processes. So it is [00:07:00] really. We need a big investment there. We need good scientifics working on that. We need the big structure. So it’s quite, sometimes it’s easy to think, okay, it’s something that must have like a big structure to be applied, you know?

[00:07:14] Future vision and applications

[00:07:14] Maryam Pasha: What’s your vision? What do you see as the potential here with this kind of innovation?

[00:07:18] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Yeah. We have two potentials. First, we are taking organic waste test for doing that. So these waste test don’t get landfills. Right. And when they don’t get landfills. They are not producing [00:07:30] methane. So we are, we have here a big potential of decarbonization.

[00:07:33] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Incredible working with that wasti. Yeah. So we tru we are truly compromised on that, on having this wasti for producing bioplastics amazing. And that we are opening this market right now with big brands. We are working with luxury products. Such as parfums, the cosmetics. So they are already acquiring our bioplastic, and this is going to replace recyclable plastic, right?

[00:07:56] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Because recyclable plastic is the perfect illusion of [00:08:00] sustainability. Yes. We need more virgin plastic for having the recycled one. And it also produce microplastic. Yeah. So this is not a solution. Yes. We have to reduce the use of, uh, petrol based plastics inserted applications and start replacing it with bioplastics.

[00:08:15] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: So.

[00:08:16] Maryam Pasha: And what, so, ’cause one of the problems right, with with traditional BI like uh, petrol based plastic is that when it biodegrades the particles go in the water, they go into our bodies. Yeah. They’re harmful. This, this side effect, this usually don’t have this side effect. Yeah, we are.

[00:08:29] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Or [00:08:30] completely organic.

[00:08:30] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Yeah. Just like an apple. I love that you can, I, I don’t recommend you to to eat it, but because Yeah,

[00:08:38] Maryam Pasha: but but in terms of once it biodegrades Yeah. And it goes into the soil or the water, it’s not having the same harmful effects. It’s not

[00:08:44] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: having the same harmful effects.

[00:08:46] Maryam Pasha: If I was the big oil companies, I’d be really scared.

[00:08:50] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Well, it is. It is a bio technological revolution that is coming here. Yeah. We like, just like the Gore-Tex is the material of the shoes. Yes. [00:09:00] Just like the intel is the material or the system for the computers. Yes. We are going to be the plastic of sustainability and that is unstoppable.

[00:09:08] Maryam Pasha: And that’s incredible because sometimes the thing that trips me up when I think about getting rid of plastic, right?

[00:09:13] Maryam Pasha: Or things like medical uses where I think, yeah. How do we replace it here? Yeah. Right, because you need the one use thing for all of the reasons of safety and sterilization. This gives us an alternative.

[00:09:26] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: Yeah. This gives us an alternative. We are working also with [00:09:30] healthcare care companies, and this is a bioplastic that is already used on prothesis.

[00:09:36] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: For example, it has the medical grade and it’s organic, so it is the perfect substitute for drug delivery and this kind of applications.

[00:09:44] Maryam Pasha: Amazing. I don’t know if we have any like billionaires listening, but if we do, can you please make sure that we get this everywhere? Yeah. I wanna, I want every type of plastic

[00:09:54] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: I

[00:09:54] Maryam Pasha: interact with to be replaced by this.

[00:09:56] Patricia Ayma Maldonado: I, I think we need more people investing on that. Mm-hmm. I think [00:10:00] we have created a, just a good business model for also returning the profit. Mm-hmm. And being really impactful. So we are here to welcome. Anybody that wants to just participate on this. This is

[00:10:11] Maryam Pasha: amazing and I love it because I think sometimes we feel like we have these intractable solutions, these things that just feel unsolvable.

[00:10:20] Maryam Pasha: But actually here we are with an answer. Here we are. And he, we will be. Yeah. Amazing.

[00:10:26] Conclusion

[00:10:26] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie.

[00:10:28] Maryam Pasha: This episode was [00:10:30] created by our superstar podcast team at TEDx London. Until next time,

[00:10:34] Ben Hurst: stay curious.