Healthcare is awash in single-use plastics. In U.S. healthcare facilities alone, more than 2,800 tons of plastic packaging and products are thrown out every day.

Few people are more aware of this than Eddie Yu. Early in the pandemic, Yu founded a company that made disposable masks. One day, his niece was with him while he was sorting recycling, and she asked him whether his mask was also recyclable.

“I told her that actually we can’t recycle the mask,” he told TechCrunch. “She just interrupted me and said, ‘Oh, then you make a lot of trash every day.’”

The little girl’s words stuck with Yu, and after selling the mask company in 2021, he set out to make amends.

In an effort to tame healthcare’s single use plastic problem, Yu’s new company, Okosix , has developed a new bio-based, bio

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