Sustainable Material Selection in MedTech with Lucas Pianegonda

Sustainability in the medical device industry is far more complex than simple material substitution. It involves a rigorous balancing act between biocompatibility, regulatory requirements, and supply chain logistics. Etienne Nichols sits down with Lucas Pianegonda, founder of Gradical, to explore why the industry is finally moving toward greener solutions and how companies can adapt without sacrificing technical performance.

The conversation identifies four primary drivers for this shift: investor pressure, customer demand from hospital systems, competitive "FOMO," and tightening European regulations like the EU Green Deal. Lucas breaks down the concept of Scope 3 emissions, revealing that materials and the device use-phase often account for over 90% of a company’s carbon footprint, making material selection the most significant lever for change.

Finally, the episode provides a pragmatic roadmap for implementation. From the "mass balance" approach that avoids re-validation to the strategic replacement of over-engineered "Ferrari" plastics like PEEK, Lucas explains how sustainability can serve as a market tie-breaker. The discussion emphasizes that the goal isn't just a "green premium" but a triple bottom line that aligns cost, patient outcomes, and environmental health.

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Key Timestamps

• 00:45 – The complexity of sustainability in a regulated environment.
• 02:15 – The four pillars driving MedTech sustainability: Investors, Customers, Competition, and Regulation.
• 04:30 – Understanding Scope 3 emissions: Why materials represent 48% of the lever.
• 08:12 – The "Society and Trees" philosophy: Lucas’s personal motivation for founding Gradical.
• 12:45 – Market Advantages: How the "Echo Inject" startup captured industry attention.
• 15:30 – Identifying over-engineered "Ferrari" plastics: The PEEK vs. Polypropylene debate.
• 18:22 – Case Study: Ambu’s strategy in single-use endoscopy and environmental LCA results.
• 21:10 – The "Mass Balance" solution: Dropping in sustainable feedstocks without re-validation.
• 24:45 – Biocompatibility: Why it’s a device property, not a material property.
• 27:15 – Global Perspectives: The NHS 2027 net-zero roadmap and California’s influence in the US.
• 31:20 – Sustainability as a tie-breaker: Gaining market share through tender wins.

Top takeaways from this episode

• Leverage the Mass Balance Approach: Utilize ISCC+ certified materials to swap fossil-fuel feedstocks for bio-based ones, maintaining identical chemical properties to avoid costly regulatory re-validation.
• Audit Over-Engineered Parts: Identify components made from high-cost, high-impact plastics (like PEEK) that could be replaced by optimized, lower-impact polymers without losing functional integrity.
• Prepare for the NHS 2027 Deadline: Suppliers must have a verified net-zero plan by 2027 to remain eligible for NHS contracts, a trend likely to spread across Europe.
• Design for the Triple Bottom Line: Aim for the intersection of cost savings, clinical performance, and eco-friendliness to ensure product viability.

References:

• Gradical: Lucas Pianegonda’s firm specializing in sustainable material selection.
• ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification): The leading certification system for mass balance supply chains.
• Ambu: A pioneer in sustainable single-use endoscopy mentioned as a strategic success story.
• Etienne Nichols’ LinkedIn: Connect with Etienne

MedTech 101: Mass Balance

Memorable quotes from this episode

"Society is stable when old men plant trees whose shadow they will never sit under." - Lucas Pianegonda

"Biocompatibility is a device property and not a material property." - Lucas Pianegonda

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Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by Greenlight Guru. Whether you are transitioning to sustainable materials or launching a new innovation, Greenlight Guru’s QMS (Quality Management System) helps you maintain compliance throughout material changes, while their EDC (Electronic Data Capture) solutions ensure your clinical data is robust and audit-ready.   

Transcript

Etienne Nichols: Sustainability in medtech is one of those topics that sounds straightforward until you actually try to do it. Swapping out a plastic in a medical device isn't like switching to a recycled tote bag.

It touches biocompatibility, regulatory compliance, supply chain manufacturing and cost all at once. And yet the pressure to make products more sustainable is only growing from regulators, hospital systems and from the market itself.

So how do you actually do this? Who's leading the way? What does the path forward look like for companies that want to move but don't know where to start?

That's exactly what we're getting in today with Lucas Pianegonda, founder of Gradical and one of the sharpest minds working on sustainable materials in the medtech space.

Lucas is a material scientist from ETH Zurich who has spent his career at the intersection of polymer science, medical devices and sustainability. He's the founder of Gradical, a company helping medtech firms select more sustainable plastics without sacrificing technical performance, regulatory compliance or cost.

He's also a guest lecturer at ETH, teaching the next generation of engineers how to think about material selection in regulated industries.

Let's go.

What's actually driving medtech companies to care about sustainability Right now? That's the biggest question and maybe just blending in, what's what causes you to care about sustainability right now?

Lucas Pianegonda: I think there are four main driving factors that make companies in general and also medtech care about sustainability.

Number one is going to be, I would say investor pressure, slash their own commitments. So, they have like a lot of big companies have, so called SPTI science-based target initiative commitments or verified targets. So, they voluntarily committed towards climate action, reducing their CO2 footprint.

And there what you say is like if you check the 100 biggest medtech companies, so, so the J&J’s and all of them you find that 49 have commitments or verified targets and that is like 330, 340 ish billion turnover per year. So that's like roughly 60% of medtech depending on how you estimate our market size.

So, and this will give pressure towards their suppliers. So, in science-based Targets you also need to take action on so called scope three, which is your suppliers and also your use phase.

So, your customers and your suppliers. And it's easier to commit your suppliers to do anything about sustainability than to commit your customers to doing something.

So that is I'd say the point number one. So, if companies want to reduce their CO2 footprint, they obviously need to start caring about sustainability. And this is why we; we want to touch something like our materials. And then if you can go and see, okay, but how big of a lever is our materials?

Yeah.

Then you see that Swiss medtech did a road zero, excuse me, net zero roadmap. And what they analyzed is scope one, two, three, so direct, indirect and supply chain emissions. And what they found is 95% is scope three. So up and downstream.

Etienne Nichols: Wow.

Lucas Pianegonda: And the two things that are the biggest levers is not number one is the materials. 48%.

No.

Yeah, 48%.

And then 43% is going to be the use phase. So, if you have an electrical medical device, energy used in the use phase is going to be a very, very strong lever plus the materials. So, if you have something that is a consumable, it's, it's usually going to be the material that is your biggest lever overall there, honest, there are some special cases, but usually it's the materials and the energy used that is your biggest lever.

So that is point one.

And then the point number two is going to be customer pressure. So, what we see is that hospitals care about their medical waste that is produced with a lot of single use devices.

So, usually what you hear is, yeah, what do we do about all of this medical waste and how can we combat this? Because also waste is a huge cost driver in hospitals.

So, there is something the customer pressure and then there's the point one number three, which very elevated, elegantly gives a, I'd say feedback loop to the point number two. And that is the competition.

So, if the competition has something that is claiming to be more sustainable or is actually more sustainable, then what do you say is you get the FOMO, you get the fear of missing out. So, oh my, my competition has something on the market and then they want to, or the medical device companies want to have something too.

So, this was very funny. I was on the pharma pack this year and there was a startup that launched a sustainable auto injector, and it was really funny that after their little TED talk, their little five-minute innovation talk, they had a flock of people around their booth and 80% of them were their competitors.

So, everybody.

Yeah, it was really. Everybody was trying to figure out what they're doing and how they're doing it.

So, this was pretty fun. And then if you have something on the. Or if the competition has something on the market, the customers will start asking, hey, but those guys can do it. So, what can do? Can, can't you do something about this?

And then I think the fourth one, and this is stronger in Europe than it is in other parts of the world, is going to be regulation. So, the European has something, European Union has something that is called the European Green Deal.

And they have a bunch of regulations lined up that to make like every industry, including medtech, more sustainable. So, this is a very short summary on what I think that these, that, that medtech. That is driving medtech towards more sustainability.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah. Why do you particularly. Because when we talked previously, I know you're, you're very passionate about this, but why does Lucas care about this?

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah, I mean I, I would say I stumbled a little into it. So yeah, I have kids and I want to leave my kids a better planet and yeah, a better world than, than I encountered. I think this is reasonable to do so. I think this is, we have a good society of.

I'd say people there, there's this, I think this is an old Arab saying. I may be misquoting here, but. But I don't care. It's like society is stable when old men plant trees whose shadow their only their kids will sit under or they never will sit under their shadow.

Like kind of paraphrasing here. Yeah, but this is, this is actually my motivation. So I have a very long term, I'd say perspective on the world and also on my business.

And why I particularly stumbled into this topic is in 22, I decided that I want to found my own company because I want to be my own boss. There's a whole story behind this.

It's like when I studied, I had the opportunity to be part of a startup. I did decide against it due to personal reasons mainly not wanting to commute 2 hours per way per day.

So 4 hours of commute plus 60 hours of startup work with my wife being having a contract somewhere else. So I basically decided for my wife and against the startup.

But that always bugged me a little. So I wanted always to be like a founder and my own boss. So I decided I need to do this, I need to found my own company.

And then I figured out, okay, what can you do? Well, I can do plastics. I'm a material scientist by training. I can do plastic selection, material compliance, sustainable plastics, material testing, I could do all of that. And there needs to be some market of this. It's like my only bet I took is that there are fewer experts for plastics and medical technology that are actually needed.

And until now my bet is going well.

So. Awesome. Yeah.

And then what I found is that meta companies, the two topics that are really like bugging them is okay, sustainability and material compliance. So what kind of substances can I put in my medical device and them still being safe for humans and the environment and how do I improve the sustainability on my devices?

And to be very honest, it's like these topics, they are very, very strongly converging. So, sustainability, regulation and mature compliance regulations, they're becoming the same, at least in Europe.

So yeah, and what I found is that the typical project would be my customers come to me and say I have Device X on the market.

I want to make the next generation of this device with bells and whistles and usability and improved clinical outcome. And ah, yeah, now it needs to be sustainable now. And we have no clue what that actually means.

Please tell us what it means and what materials we can actually take. So how can we improve sustainability? How do we even measure it and what can we do about it?

This is like the, the theme that, that became a recurring theme and then I thought, okay, let's niche down. This is still is going to be my thing since there's obviously going to be a market for it and people want to do it.

So yeah, this is, this is how I stumbled into it.

I discovered it.

Etienne Nichols: I love that. That's awesome. Just learning by discovery. So you talked a little bit about why companies might want to do that. And one thing that I thought was interesting when you were talking about that is supply, you, you mentioned how some companies are able to do it going to their suppliers because that pressure, you know, for their suppliers to do it, customer pressure as well, which is interesting to me because it's just, we're really talking about the same thing. When you talk about your customers are pressurizing or you're, you're pressuring your suppliers, it's all pushing backwards to a certain degree.

That seems to be maybe the theme and how to do this is to get the guy up behind you to do it or somebody up or downstream of you is sort of putting pressure on you to do it.

How is it that companies should really go about doing this? And what's, what are some of the tactics that you recommend? And maybe, maybe, you know, actually timeout what maybe A better question is who really does this apply to first?

And then we can get into to how.

Lucas Pianegonda: Repeat that question again please.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, who, who does this really apply to? I mean the bigger players, they have their ability to do it. What about the smaller players? Does it make sense for them to be pursuing the same goals?

Lucas Pianegonda: Yes, I mean I would say smaller players usually are more agile and this is like their, their one trump card they have over bigger players. Bigger players are, they have a lot of resources, people, money, capital, processes, assets, but their big disadvantage is that they're super slow. So and it takes a lot of alignment to get 100 people on board or a hundred thousand people on board than to get your 5, 10, 20 people on board with I'd say doing things differently.

So I wouldn't say that this is only a big corporate topic. It's a topic over all company sizes.

I would say like if you have a very, very early stage startup, they're usually worried more about getting to market than surviving.

And I think this is also a theme with, I'd say in general sustainability starts to matter when you can matter when you can think about the future enough.

So, if I worry too much about what will I eat tomorrow, then what's going to be in 30 years, then you're not going to care about sustainability.

It's, it's also the reason why like poorer countries care less about sustainability because they're worried about other, I'd say more pressing problems since yeah, this whole environmental thing is going to be a problem in the future more and it's perceived as to be a future problem.

And so with a very early stage startups they're not too much worried about the sustainability thing.

Usually the founders are very aware of it and they want to do something about it, but it's only if it gives them a market advantage. If they see a market advantage they're going to do it.

Else they're very much worried about how can we allocate capital the better best way.

And then with these.

Etienne Nichols: Oh, sorry. Well I'm just real quick question about that. Do you see that as a market advantage pretty regularly or how does that work?

Lucas Pianegonda: Oh yes, oh yes, it's 100% a market advantage.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah.

Lucas Pianegonda: If you can, if you can find a niche where nobody has served the, the problem of sustainability well enough, you're going to create a lot of fuzz about you. So, this, the perfect example was this, like this Pharmaprix stories like this, the company is called Echo Inject and they're an auto injector. Company from the UK and you know, if you can find a solution for a problem that exists like GLP1 catapulted auto injectors to the billions per year.

So they're producing billions of auto injectors per year now.

And what if you have a solution for all of this? I'd say now single use plastic waste that they're producing in a very, I'd say eco-friendly way or at least more eco friendly than the competition does.

You definitely have a market advantage. And the point is like people see sustainability still as a, I'd say green premium. So I pay more to have it greener.

And this doesn't need to be the case. Like sometimes this is the case that green materials have a supply chain that just makes them a little more expensive and then you have to calculate the trade off.

Okay, it's a little better for the environment, but it's going to cost you a little more. Who's going to pay for that cost? Are we going to pay for it or is the customer going to pay for it?

There's a dilemma a little bit, but you can also align cost, patient outcome and eco friendliness.

And if you manage to do all three of them, so hit the triple bottom line, you're going to have a very good product that is very viable.

Yeah. And, and there's proof out there that this is actually possible.

Etienne Nichols: From your material science background, could you give us just an example of a material that you could trade out? This is a common material. And then here's a material that you probably never have thought of any, any, anything you can kind of just give a little bit of, I don't know, credence to.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah. So what we encounter very, very often in, in medtech is going to be the, I'm calling it, we've always done it like this.

So it's just you have this, I'd say either industry collective memory or it's just going to be oh, we've always done it like this. It's like our first product went out with this exact material.

Nobody's really sure how we actually chose that material and it's approved and we can use this as a predecessor device and it's going to work. Don't touch the material. It's just too much of a pain to touch it.

And the question is just is that mater that you may have been, that may have been 10, 20, 30 years in the application, is that actually the best choice?

So I've encountered this many times.

For example, I, I, I saw this is A sample holder. It's basically a, a mechanical device. It's basically a plate with a bunch of holes in it. And the only purpose is like hold the sample where it's supposed to be.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah.

Lucas Pianegonda: And this is made from, it's machined out of Peak. Peek is like at the pinnacle of the, the high-performance plastics is the, one of the, I would say it's a Ferrari of plastics.

So very high performance, very expensive, but also a very high environmental impact.

And then I looked at that and it's like, oh, cool. What, what kind of material is that? It looks like peak because peak has this very particular, I'd say ivory color. If it's natural, you can tell it's peak. And then they were like, oh, it's peak. And I was like, why, why is this peak? And then they're like, yeah, our engineer had it laying around and then, and then we made the part and it worked and it's validated, so don't touch it.

And you, if you really want to have cost savings along with environmental savings, like go, go for these over engineered applications where it's just like, yeah, we always done it like this and, and we will never change it.

So just like have a critical look and see. Okay, could we do this with a material that is less costly and less environmental impact? Like 20 years ago this was called optimizing your product or cost down or whatever you would call it.

And what we find often is that, that these two things very much align. So if you get rid of peak and use a PA6 or use a polypropylene with glass fibers or something like that, you will first of all have a lot less environmental impact. And on top you will save cost. And it's like the cost saving is going to sell it to your management and then the eco friendliness is just going to be the cherry on top.

Etienne Nichols: When a company decides that they want to pursue something like this, pursuing sustainability, sustainable materials, I mean that sounds like that's one of the first steps. But how do you get that mindset into the company?

Where do companies actually begin?

Lucas Pianegonda: Here is a very good question. It's like usually you'll have to have one of the factors that we just discussed. One, regulatory pressure, customer pressure, investor pressure, or competitive pressure. If you don't have any of the, of these, even the most ideological management member will have difficulties arguing for it.

And I would say you see this pressure mounting up in a bunch of disciplines. I would say. So, auto injectors was an example that we, that we discussed, but also Surgical devices, endoscopy, for example, lab consumables, packaging.

Those are the ones. Ophthalmology. Ophthalmology is a big one since they have like 30 million cataract surgeries a year.

And where you see a bunch of visible waste, you see also the customer pressure. You see that, that your competition starts doing something and then people start to figure out, and I would take the poster child example here is the company Ambu, they do single use endoscopy and they blew up over Covid.

It's like Covid did strike a lot of fear of cross contamination.

So people started and hospitals started switching from multi use endoscopy to single use endoscopy. And then the most, the number one criticism that you'll get but this is single use now.

So what did Dumbo do is they incorporated sustainability into their core strategy and said, okay, everything we do is going to be aligned with patient outcome, with environmental footprint and with cost footprint.

So we're going to make cheap, reliable, environmentally friendly and convenient medical devices.

And the market success shows that this is a very viable strategy. So they're, they're very, very successful. And they have shown that like with four out of five LCAs they, they are considered or reviewed this show, it shows that their single use devices actually are better for the environment than, than the multi use.

So it's not a hundred percent, but it's like four out of five LCAs say that.

Etienne Nichols: Interesting. That's. I, I love that example of Ambu doing the right, well, doing the thing that is most beneficial for the environment, but also, you know, improving their bottom line as well. That's a good example.

I'm curious, you mentioned regulatory a couple times. The regulatory pressure.

What is the, there's a regulatory pressure to do that I know in the EU to move towards sustainability. But what about the regulatory friction that they're going to face once they start doing that?

Whether it's from testing materials or proving that this material works, the clinical applications. What are your thoughts there?

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah, so I would say changing materials in existing products is going to be a huge pain.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah.

Lucas Pianegonda: So let's keep with the example of the auto injector. And like if you make auto injectors, you want to make them in the billions per year. So what you do is you have 128 cavity mold, which is extremely complex and extremely costly and very well balanced towards this particular grade.

So, just switching from one grade of polypropylene to another grade of polypropylene is not always possible.

So, changing a Material is going to be extremely difficult, especially when you have rank ramped up production to a I'd say industrial per million million per year scale.

That is going to be extremely difficult. So what you can do is like one option that you have is what I would call mass balance drop in solutions.

So this is also what I'd say plastic industry is pushing very strongly.

So what you do is you replace fossil fuels at the beginning of the supply chain as I'd say feedstock for base chemicals with something like bio based or chemical recycled feedstock.

And that is going to yield the same plastics with the same physical, chemical, biological properties. So this is a drop in solution. There's a catch to it like the whole supply chain needs to be certified and the biggest certification is called International Sustainability and Carbon Certification is called the ISCC.

There is some work involved in this but you can just get your company and your supply chain certified and then you can basically avoid all this revalidation and clinical testing and biological testing.

So that is a very valid solution.

Secondly, if you do new products, I would say now it's mand. I would say yeah, mandatory, maybe you can get away with with it for like one generation but at least your next generation of products that you're developing.

So, if you're developing now the next generation of your products, I would highly recommend that you do incorporate eco design, sustainable materials, structured material selection process.

But you probably can't get away with it one time or this time next time you won't be able to get away with it. So the regulatory pressure will be as you will be required to do it at least in your.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, that makes sense. What I'm curious. So you, you talked about the actual commercial and the manufacturing behind it.

When it comes to the biocompatibility, are you able to assist as far as or what are your thoughts there? Do they typically have the same biocompatibility characteristics or are there things that people need to be kind of paying attention to as they're selecting those materials when it comes to biocompatibility.

Lucas Pianegonda: So, if you have a grade, let's call it just grade A and you are using an ISTC plus mass balanced, I'd say bio based biocircular replacement grade, which is a one-to-one replacement, then you don't need to worry about different biocompatibility. It's the same grade, it's made in the same reactor, same process, same everything.

So this is really a drop in solution. However, if you're using something like a PLA polylactic acid or recycled material. Especially if you do. If you're going for something like a mechanical recycled material, then biocompatibility is going to be like your major hurdle. And I would only recommend going for mechanical recycled materials if you have a low risk and if you are well capable of getting a normal material through biocomp.

I always say it's like using recycled material is going to be the pinnacle of medical engineering and sometimes it's not even worth to do it.

But yeah, regarding the topic of biocompatibilities, there's a lot of misconceptions here.

It's like the question I get asked so much is, okay, is this going to be biocompatible? This great. I'm like, yeah, this is the wrong question to ask. It's like biocompatibility is a risk assessment and it depends on your device, it depends on your intended use, it depends on a lot.

It's like your gray can be biocompatible in whatever skin contacting device, but it would never be acceptable in an implantable scenario. So that is really how you should think about this.

It's like, yeah, biocompatibility is a device property and not a material property.

Etienne Nichols: That's a good way to look at it. I like that phraseology. It's advice property, not the material. Yeah, that's really good if you're thinking about the future.

So the EU is already kind of mandating this. You kind of have a direction to go from that standpoint. The FDA is not necessarily required that. So do you see any companies that are primarily US focused or I don't know how many work with or in different regions, but do you see any of them moving that direction just on their own?

And if so, do you? What's some of the biggest reasons behind that?

Lucas Pianegonda: So I'm now going to make a statement who will maybe be a little bit controversial, but let's see.

I would say California is the Europe of the U.S. yeah, it's like mainly if you have requests, they're going to be California based.

So, I would say the US in general is not, as I'd say, keen on sustainability or has a different, let's say, understanding on sustainability.

They will. Hospitals will always care about the waste problem. It's like all of the hospitals will care about the waste. Since it's a liability issue, it's going to be cost issue.

But I would say that especially in California, you see a lot of, let's say, traction on this. Okay, can we do things better? Can we do it more environmentally friendly?

And, and so that would be, I'd say, my take. It's. It's mainly based on where you are and this is also the case, by the way, for Europe. So Europe is also not homogeneous. It's like you have the Nordics, you have Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark.

Those, those are very strong on also putting these requirements into tenders, like the UK, with the NHS, their net zero roadmap, like until 2027, you have, have to have something to, to figure out how you want to get to net zero, or else you're out of, out of the picture, you're not going to supply.

Etienne Nichols: Wow, I didn't realize. 2027.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yes, yes.

Etienne Nichols: Wow.

Lucas Pianegonda: You, you as a supplier of the NHS, have to have a, a plan on how to support the NHS in their net zero roadmap until 2024, 2045, or else you're not going to get considered anymore. So it's. The NHS is quite the, I'd say quite the signal.

Yeah.

Role here. Yes.

And then I would say the Germany and Switzerland and Austria, like, they're, they like to have something in their pocket. It's like, yeah, it's not compliance now, but we know it's coming so we'd like to be prepared. But now it's a little too much cost, so let's just keep something in our back pocket and have something develop in case it becomes compliant.

And then.

Yeah, I think I mentioned Ireland, so that's about it. And yeah, so, so that's my take. It's like very much also based on geography.

Etienne Nichols: Well, money is the kind of the. I, I see it as the air companies breathe. You have to make a profit and we don't always think about that. From a medical device standpoint.

We usually think about, there's the regulatory component, there's the ethical component, we don't always think about the financial component. If you're a supplier, you're thinking about that, but if you're, if you're not, then, you know, obviously there's other things to be thinking about.

So, from a financial standpoint, are there any other tips you can give to really help that economic backing when it comes to sustainability? You gave a really good example of swapping out Peak, which is that Ferrari of materials.

And it's interesting because I can. I remember just engineers desk being littered with Peak and different nylon and all the different materials there. And Peak was one that everybody liked to use because it's easy for a lot of different things.

But any other pieces of advice or tips that, you know, this, this is something you can do without costing more money and may this is even a cost savings.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah.

So I would say know your engineering is probably a good idea. So don't, don't over engineer. Don't make the wall thickness three times as as it needs to be.

Don't use materials that are completely overkill just because they work. It's like, yeah, it's easy and fast to use peak because yeah, if peak doesn't, doesn't work. You need to take steel.

It's like there's no plastic.

Who's going to work with mechanical requirements where peak fails?

And then what I also would say is like, don't actually. And maybe this is not answering the question, but it's like the kind of advice that I can give.

It's like don't try to just swap out more sustainable material and then charge a customer for it because it's like commercially it's going to fail. It's like we thought that worked three to four years ago, did fail.

So your green premium, sort of premium on a product can be maybe 5% and then that's about it. So what I would say is that sustainability is going to be like the tiebreaker.

So if the cost and the performance is the same, the more sustainable product is going to win.

And this is going to be something that you can leverage in order to gain market access or leverage in order to gain market share.

So if your competitor is the same price, the same performance and you're sustainable, you're gonna grab their market share because there are going to be tender questions about sustainability. You can answer them, they cannot and then you're going to win the tender.

So this is, this is how it's, how it's going. It's like maybe you eat some margin and you still need to make a profit. I could completely agree with you.

It's like money is the air company breeze. I really love that.

But it's sometimes it's also better to like play this card. Okay, maybe let's eat a little margin here in order to play a long game and say, okay, we're going to take the market share away from our competitors.

And with that scale, we can also make use of the economy of scale in order to get better prices for our materials, for example, in order to have more automation justifiable.

And then you're going to win the long game. So this is, this is how I see it, how you should strategically position your sustainable medical device. It's not always about having a premium on your product.

It's sometimes about gaining Market share.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah. And that phrase, I need to give credit where credit's due. Money being the air companies breathe, came from Dan Purvis. I think he's the CEO. Well, he was the CEO at the time of Valentium, which was a manufacturing company, and Texas.

But one of the things, one of the points he made was money's the air company breathed. But just like you, you breathe air. That's not actually your aspiration. It's not your goal in life.

It's something you have to do to survive. And so you don't ever stop breathing, you know, and saying, don't ever stop making money. But there are other things that are really going to be your, your aspirations and your goals.

And one of the other things I wanted to mention that you said was the know, your engineering three. You know, why would you make the wall thickness three times what it needs to be for a 10x factor of safety?

My, My brother was a civil engineer, I was a mechanical engineer. I worked in aerospace for a little while.

Our goal was to have a 1.1 factor of safety, which, because you want, you wanted the, the lightest possible materials because they had to go into the, you know, and fly, fly around and you wanted to reduce fuel.

So we really had to know our engineering. And he talked about, he'd say, oh, we have a factor of safety on a bridge of four or five, you know, which makes sense.

You want a bridge to be incredibly strong. Medical devices are somewhere in between, I suppose.

But I think that's a really good point because we have people making products that, you know, there's not true engineering principles behind them. So that alone can save you a lot of money.

I would say.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah, yeah. Completely, completely agree.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah.

Do you, when you're talking to these companies, what are some of the biggest pitfalls you see or the things that you really have to educate them on? Any, any common pitfalls you see.

Lucas Pianegonda: I would say there's a lot of knowledge gaps and a lot of the knowledge comes from like, what I read online about these things.

Like a very common one is I would say bioplastics. It's like when we talk about bioplastics, it's okay, what we actually, what do we actually mean?

Because it's like the term bioplastic is completely imprecise what people usually think. And the even worse term is biomaterial, because it's like if you Google biomaterial, you'll find anything from, oh, this material is actually implantable. So it's like, it's biocompatible. And this is why we call it a biomaterial. Nothing to do with actually being bio based or having to do anything with, I'd say being more sustainable.

And then if you search for bioplastics, you'll find everything from biodegradable, bio based, compostable. And those terms always get mixed up. So bio based means just it has some content between 0 and 100 or 1 and 100. To be bio based of bio based feedstock that might be over mass balance.

So as I described before, just like the feedstock at the beginning of the chain is different or being whatever biosynthesized or physical content bio based, such as pla, such as you can also take castor oil and make polyamides from it.

It's like all sorts of bio based materials. And then there's biodegradable, which is a material property. It's like, it means that you can be hydrolyzed and attacked by and digested by different micro microbes.

And that term not only applies to bio based materials. So, there are bio-based materials who biodegrade very well, but there are also fossil based materials who can biodegrade, such as pbat, which is one of the first biodegradable materials that there was from a little-known company such as BASF.

And yeah, so then we have compostability. And compostability is actually a, I would say process property, compostability. There are a bunch of norms associated with it.

Can you compose something that depends on the product so as it is with the biocompatibility to like link this together?

It's not like the material obviously helps with compostability as does the material help with biocompatibility, but a product is compostable. So, we can all agree that the tree trunk is biodegradable but put it on a parking spot and see how long it takes to go to go away.

Like yeah, it takes forever to degrade because it's a biodegradable material, but it's not compostable. It's like if you throw it on a compost, it takes forever to compost.

However, if you do like a very thin biodegradable plastic, you put that on a compost, it will go away.

Within the norm says that for industrial composting, it's at 60 degrees. It needs to take six weeks until it's 90% disintegrated and then six months until it's 90% compost converted to CO2.

This is the, this is the norm.

I don't know the number by Heart. But there's a nice.

The norm at least for it.

So yeah, this is one of the, I'd say common misunderstandings that, that, that I always have to teach.

I'd say that the landscape of sustainable plastics, overall, it's like what kind of sustainable plastics are there? It's like with, with recycling, it's the same. It's like everybody thinks recycling is just mechanical recycling, but there's a bunch of other methods.

I would say overall, the landscape of sustainable plastics is what I usually have to teach.

Etienne Nichols: Wow, that's awesome. I, you know, I, I almost need to have a, another podcast with you about just other things. Like I live off grid and there's so many things that a material scientist could teach people like living like me.

So that's, that's crazy.

Lucas Pianegonda: Completely open for it. You just tell me when.

Etienne Nichols: Okay.

Why don't you. Actually, let's just use this as a quick segue. Why don't you tell some of the audience about what you do with your podcast? Because I, I think, I think it's, you know, those people who are interested in learning more the details.

I don't know enough always to ask the questions that I really should ask on this, but I know you cover really deep topics on your podcast.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah. So actually started out in German. I did 50 episodes in German and then I started gradually switching to an English video podcast.

And we cover basically everything regarding or at the intersection of medtech, sustainability and plastics.

So we have had very, very diverse people on, so people dealing with life cycle assessments. So how do you do an, an assessment of the environmental impact?

We had people from commercialization. We had people who are engineers who talk about eco design. We have had actually the director of sustainability from Ambu, we have him on.

So I know, I know a lot of this.

Yeah. So, I would say if you're interested in med tech, sustainability and plastics and learning more about this, go check out my podcast. You can, you can, I think type in Lucas Pianegonda at YouTube and you'll find my, my page. There's my podcast. I, I also have, I regularly upload shorts and, and, and other videos about these topics.

And then I have my, my interviews on there.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, we'll put the links in the show notes too so people can find, find you. And yeah, we, we met on LinkedIn, so I think that's always a good place to, to find people as well. So we'll put your LinkedIn as well.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah.

Etienne Nichols: Any other piece of advice that you want to give companies out there who are Trying to move a little bit closer to sustainability or maybe who are thinking about it.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah, I mean, the obvious choice is just come talk to me and I'll teach you.

The second thing is just start. Just start. It's like people make a lot of excuses. Or I would say, like, people and companies have these mindset problems. It's like, oh, it's just gonna cost too much. My customer is not gonna care about it.

It's like all these, I wouldn't say excuses, but it's like they actually believe that. And I think it's. I'd say internal resistance because they actually want to do it.

I find that a lot of engineers, a lot of people involved, they actually want to do the right thing. It's like you are in medtech, like if you want to do a **** ton of money, you just.

Where do you go? You go like tech AI wherever, like where you get these ridiculous salaries.

And if you want to do something good for the people, you, you usually go to medtech, it's like, yeah, it's a very fulfilling thing that, okay, the products I develop, I produce are actually saving people's lives or significantly improving them.

So people want to do the right thing. The intern, the intrinsic motivation is there.

So what you should do is you should get over these, I say mindset problems and get started.

So do your first concepts for a medical device that is more sustainable. It doesn't need to be perfect. Just make a concept and say, okay, now we have something in the pocket.

We looked at it, we analyzed, okay, where can we do better and start learning and start connecting with people? Because everybody has the same problems. I go from company to company is always the same thing, same few things, like changing material is hard.

We don't have a structured material selection process. We always done it like this.

We think customer is not willing to pay more.

Like, those are all the challenges that we see. And you're not alone. So go out and get some help.

Etienne Nichols: Even that structured material process or material selection process, that alone, that could change companies and the way they design products.

If you don't have a structure, which I've worked in product development, and it is just kind of a, well, what have you used before? So that's, it's. Yeah, there needs to be more structure there, more material scientists in the world.

Lucas Pianegonda: Yeah, there's. There's the two most common ways. It's like, okay, well, have we used before? So product generation minus one has used this grade, so we take this grade.

Secondly, if you don't have a grade. Okay, so we manufacture it with this CDMO and he has this grade laying around.

So let's take that. Yeah, that's the sec. That's the second most common.

Etienne Nichols: Yeah, yeah. Oh man. And it's. Yeah. Leaving a lot on the table when you do it that way. So awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, Lucas, everybody. Those of you who are listening, really appreciate you taking the time to listen to this episode.

Hope it was valuable to you and definitely go check out Lucas and what he's doing over on his podcast as well. We'll put those links in the show notes. Until then, everybody take care.

Yeah. Thank you very much. Until the next time, thanks for tuning into the Global Medical Device Podcast. If you found value in today's conversation, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you've got thoughts or questions, we'd love to hear from you.

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About the Global Medical Device Podcast:

The Global Medical Device Podcast powered by Greenlight Guru is where today's brightest minds in the medical device industry go to get their most useful and actionable insider knowledge, direct from some of the world's leading medical device experts and companies.

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