Sustainable Packaging Through Chemistry

Plastic consumption has quadrupled around the world in the past three decades according to a 2022 report from the intergovernmental public policy organization OECD. In the United States alone, the average person generates nearly 500 pounds of plastic waste every year. And despite efforts to recycle these materials, in reality, less than 10 percent of plastics are actually recycled.

Statistics like these led Kritika Jha, a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry, to want to make a change. So, using her background in polymer-based chemistry, she started AekoVera, a company that aims to knock down the barriers that prevent businesses from choosing more sustainable packaging options.

“The plastic problem was such an igniting issue for me,” she says. “I wanted to see where I could use my scientific insights and find the fundamental problem behind why producers are still using so much plastic.”

The World of Plastics

Jha, who is from Bihar, India, is conducting her PhD research on polymer-based materials, which are made from tiny repeating chains of natural or synthetic molecules. They are often used in product packaging because they can be designed to have many desirable properties. Jha works in the lab of Zahra Fakhraai, a professor in the Department of Chemistry who investigates nanomaterials, specially engineered materials with dimensions about 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

Jha’s own interest in science stemmed from a young age, as her father, a chemist, explored with her questions about the physical world and took her on laboratory and factory visits. Her interest in plastics, specifically, began when she helped her brother, also a budding chemist, prepare for an environmental science course presentation about plastic pollution.

As a chemistry PhD student focused on sustainability herself, Jha initially wanted to develop and design her own affordable, biodegradable packaging materials in the lab. This was her original idea for AekoVera. But when she talked to business owners in sectors like cosmetics or food and beverage about what they actually needed, she found it wasn’t new packaging materials but better access to the ones that already existed.

“Businesses weren’t struggling because better materials didn’t exist,” Jha explains. “They were struggling because sustainable packaging was fragmented, expensive, and disconnected from the realities of design, branding, and supply chains.”

Beyond that, Jha discovered that other major roadblocks were stopping companies from actually using these options. Compared to sustainable packaging, virgin plastics (newly created, not recycled) are cheap, and the supply chain is easy to navigate. Choosing environmentally friendly alternatives requires more work from business owners, necessitating tasks such as independently sourcing manufacturers. All in all, this process can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Jha hoped to change that.

The plastic problem was such an igniting issue for me. I wanted to see where I could use my scientific insights and find the fundamental problem behind why producers are still using so much plastic.

Removing Barriers

With a new vision in place for AekoVera, Jha worked with Penn’s student entrepreneurship hub, Venture Lab, to assemble a team of like-minded students who also wanted to make a difference in the sustainability space. The process helped Jha realize that AekoVera could be most useful as a one-stop shop for business owners who want to adopt sustainable packaging but don’t have the resources. She’s using a mix of chemistry and artificial intelligence (AI) to get there, offering a design platform for businesses to develop visual assets, a packaging optimization tool, and connections to affordable sustainable packaging manufacturers.

Jha says she plans for AekoVera to feature its own AI-enhanced design platform, similar to Canva, enabling businesses to quickly create packaging visuals without a design background. Additionally, an AI-powered packaging optimization tool will analyze marketing data to help businesses refine their packaging for maximum customer appeal. And most importantly, Jha says she wants to connect customers with sustainable packaging manufacturers worldwide, offering options from recycled plastics to innovative materials like fungi-based packaging.

Though developing her own sustainable packaging material is no longer her primary focus, Jha says the work still dovetails perfectly with her PhD research, in which she is investigating polymer- and molecular-based materials that can extend the shelf life of packaged products.

“As a chemist, I can understand the compatibility of the product with that sustainable or eco-friendly material,” Jha says. “I can see, does it extend the shelf life? Is it chemically compatible with it or not?”

Jha has also had to learn new skills. This is her first time working in tech, so she is teaching herself how to code. She’s also been practicing building AI workflows—coding tools that help automate tasks using AI—to get up to speed, so she can fully understand the technology her startup will implement.

Jha’s next steps are getting the platform up and running and continuing to build interest among potential customers, with a full public launch targeted for this summer. She already has a network of Penn alumni ready to jump in and start using AekoVera to expand sustainable packaging in their businesses.

“There’s a big problem,” Jha says. “I thought, being a scientist and having these great minds at Penn, we might actually be able to solve it.”