Dive Brief:
- Biomaterials company Erthos is partnering with Colgate-Palmolive to collaborate on Erthos’ AI-powered platform, Zya, which aids sustainable materials development. Zya will help the consumer packaged goods company virtually design biopolymer packaging materials that meet their performance specifications and sustainability aspirations.
- Rather than using published experimental data and predicting broad properties of general materials, Zya integrates Erthos’ proprietary R&D with fundamental AI modeling for targeted sustainable formulations, said Erthos co-founder and CEO Nuha Siddiqui.
- Erthos has been developing Zya as an in-house tool for years and now intends to commercialize it, starting with the exclusive Colgate-Palmolive partnership for the next several months. The company plans to fully launch and open the platform to other users in early 2026.
Dive Insight:
Zya speeds R&D, cuts costs, cuts risk and accelerates the market launch of bioplastics for packaging, according to Siddiqui.
Erthos launched seven years ago to develop biobased compounds as alternatives to plastics. The company initially built Zya as an internal tool for its R&D teams to accelerate the material development and customization work they did for brands. But then they realized the tool could be more impactful if brands directly accessed it, said Siddiqui.
“We've all recognized that we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to our plastic reduction goals. And the goal is really to look at Zya as almost a marketplace and a platform for all of the key players in the supply chain to be able to be a part of the process and develop their materials a lot quicker,” she said.
For months, the company searched for the right partner to co-develop the tool and improve its artificial intelligence capabilities. Bringing on Colgate-Palmolive as the first partner was appealing in part because “they come with a really interesting portfolio of products, where there's so many different plastic applications — from the flexible packaging to the rigids,” Siddiqui said. “And they have been very progressive in some of their sustainability goals, with the focus around next-generation and biobased materials.”
The collaboration started by looking at Colgate-Palmolive’s flexible packaging, including sachets and flexible films for coating and lamination applications for paper. Zya focuses on materials that are non-toxic, PFAS-free and still meet the standard performance requirements for multilayer packaging, Siddiqui said.
“It's really exciting to see that now we're able to predict properties like [water vapor transmission rate] and [oxygen transmission rate] — very specific packaging properties that are really difficult to test and build around right now,” she said. “Colgate has the ability to actually create new formulas with this database of ingredients that they haven't used before or aren't familiar with.”
The CPG company uses a number of platforms during its innovation process, including those with machine learning and AI capabilities, Greg Corra, senior vice president of global packaging and sustainability at Colgate-Palmolive, said via email. The company was interested in the Zya platform because “it’s anchored on materials science and gives our teams access to more comprehensive and actionable data to aid development,” he said.
“[W]e are strong believers in collaborative innovation,” Corra said. For packaging, “we are keenly interested in tools that can help us accelerate and scale solutions” that support the target to eliminate one-third of virgin plastic use, compared to a 2019 baseline, and to make all packaging recyclable, reusable or compostable.
Materials innovation is a critical aspect of eliminating plastic waste, which is one of the key actions in Colgate-Palmolive’s Sustainability & Social Impact Strategy, according to Corra. The company’s 2024 sustainability report shows it reduced virgin plastic tonnage by 25% compared with 2019, but it encountered challenges with getting to the one-third mark by 2025. Namely, it struggled with “the availability, quality and feasibility of recycled content,” according to the report.
Later this year, the partners plan to explore the use of Zya for other parts of Colgate-Palmolive’s packaging portfolio, such as rigids. Erthos also will continue to add platform features and further train the AI, then launch Zya next year for other CPGs to use.
“The goal is to really give them visibility into these materials and how to tap into their full potential,” Siddiqui said.
