The Latvian company Snow Recycle wants to use coffee grounds, post-juicing apple residues, and grains left over from alcohol production to produce disposable packaging. The price of the product is expected to match that of existing paper and cardboard packaging.
Marija Korabovska and Andrejs Darzelo, the founders of Snow Recycle, share that single-use containers are a hot topic. The fast food and takeaway coffee cultures are growing, and the EU recently adopted a ban on single-use plastics. Instead, paper, cardboard, and various new materials are being used.
Marija is also a co-founder of Nano Ray-T, a science-intensive startup that produces reactors to “grow” vertical carbon nanotubes. The vertical carbon tubes produced in the reactor developed by the company can be used in the production of screens, X-ray tubes, etc. Nano Ray-T produces not only reactors but also vertical carbon nanotubes. Currently, the anode material used in batteries is carbon-based, but Nano Ray-T’s carbon nanotubes are ten times smaller and can thus increase the battery’s capacity.
One use of this material is as an anode material in lithium-ion batteries. This is expected to increase battery capacity by more than five times. The material can also be used in other batteries such as in pacemakers. The company has developed a laboratory prototype for a lithium-ion battery together with the Institute of Solid State Physics at the University of Latvia. The next step is an industrial prototype. The company hopes that the industrial prototype will help attract investment to produce the material in Latvia in larger volumes, or that a larger company will show interest in acquiring the technology.
