Huid CEO on turning onion skins into compostable packaging for food waste mitigation

Huid is transforming onion skins into compostable, cellulose-based packaging. We speak to founder and CEO Renuka Ramanujam about how the product addresses challenges related to single-use plastic and paper-based solutions by repurposing food waste into scalable packaging materials.

Speaking to Packaging Insights, Ramanujam delves into Huid’s potential implications for the foodservice packaging industry and its compliance with the UK’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulation.

Can you tell us what Huid is and what inspired it?

Ramanujam: Huid was developed to utilize onion skins, a source of abundant food waste, and to create a solution to a growing issue within food retail — single-use plastic packaging.  

The issues with fossil fuel-derived plastics (such as reliance on fossil fuels and the impacts of microplastics on the environment) are well known. Many retailers are looking to switch to paper packaging options, but for this, three billion trees are cut down annually. This impacts their carbon sequestration potential and the harsh chemical process involved to turn wood into pulp and paper, it isn’t as “green” as people might think. Recycled paper is fantastic, however it still relies on a supply of virgin wood paper.  

Can you elaborate on the process of developing Huid? 

Huid is transforming onion skins into compostable, cellulose-based packaging.Ramanujam: Our onion skin fiber — which we have currently made into cardstock sheets and molded fiber products such as Pyber — provides a new source of cellulose that is abundant and globally scalable, as onions are grown and packed around the world. They are hard to compost because of the waxes they contain and their acidic nature, often resulting in high disposal costs for onion farmers or landfill disposal. Our process helps save those costs, resulting in a very cheap raw material — and divert methane emissions generated by disposal in landfills. 

Because of the softer nature of the raw material, we use a very gentle process using food-grade reagents to process our pulp, meaning we don’t produce the “black liquor” that is produced in wood pulp processing. At the end of its life, the packaging can be safely composted or recycled in existing paper streams, depending on the application it has been used for. We are using an existing source of waste, meaning we don’t need to grow our raw material, making it a reliable and efficient feedstock. 

What are packaging trends your product responds to?

Ramanujam: Because of plastics taxes and regulation, we have seen an upswing in the demand for paper-based packaging. Hence, we are focusing on our onion paper-based solutions first. An issue with the transition between plastic and paper is that paper weighs more, resulting in larger associated emissions and higher transportation costs. Even a 50:50 blend of our Pyber fiber with recycled paper fiber provides a 25% weight reduction. Also, with the newly placed EPR in the UK, recyclability is key (instead of compostability, as compostables are ranked similarly to single-use plastic due to the lack of composting infrastructure in the UK), so our product offers a prime solution there. 

We are also developing Cellofil and Cellovar — a clear, compostable flexible film and coating, respectively, made from cellulose derived from onion skin to replace LDPE films and barrier coatings used in fresh produce packaging. On top of this, we are also looking to extract antibacterial compounds present in onion skins and integrate those into our films. This will enable them to extend the shelf life of fresh produce for up to three days longer than standard plastic films. 

Huid’s Cellofil flexible film material made from biologically processed onion skin.UK supermarkets lose the equivalent of £1 billion (US$3.7 billion) per year because of food waste, so there is a clear incentive to welcome this technology. Any shelf life extension is also key in fresh produce markets to enable growers and producers to distribute in more markets. There is a clear demand for our films as a lot of plastic films (in the UK) are currently not curbside recyclable, such as PE or rigid plastics. The first iteration of Cellofil will likely be ready in two to three years, and hopefully, then, the UK will have made progress on its composting infrastructure, and we will likely look at working in the EU, where composting infrastructure is more developed. 

What are your plans to commercialize and scale Huid?

Ramanujam: Pyber has been validated in a small manufacturing setup, and we are planning to refine parts of our process so it can be scaled up in the existing manufacturing infrastructure.  We are working on automating parts of our process, but currently, we can do small-batch production in more premium markets. We are now communicating with manufacturing partners that can help us reach the volume needed to service large food retailers and fresh produce packers.  

Utilizing a source of waste that is familiar to most people, culturally, we hope there will be a shift in consumer acceptance toward materials like this and that the composting infrastructure and legislation will also follow suit.