Saving the f#$%ing rainforests with Shara Ticku of C16 Biosciences

0:00Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to How I Built This Early Early and Ad Free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Audible has an incredible selection with over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and Audible originals, all in one easy app. Find the genres you love and discover new ones. explore bestsellers new releases plus thousands of included audiobooks podcasts and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time enjoy audible anytime while doing other things household chores exercising on the road commuting you name it audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time there's more to imagine when you listen.

1:06Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.com slash built. I've stayed in awesome homes on Airbnb in places like Athens and Berlin and Rome, and each time these places have given our family a chance to feel like locals. It's the best way to travel. Picture this. You're spending a cozy evening out of town in a home you booked on Airbnb. The space is thoughtfully designed and you think, I bet I could host my own home on Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Your AI agents make your teams more productive, right?

1:48But if they aren't connected to the rest of your business, how productive can they really make your teams? Any business can use AI, IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business, IBM. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So chances are, if you brushed your teeth today or did the laundry or swiped on deodorant or ate a protein bar, you came across palm oil. It's in almost everything, more than 50 % of products on supermarket shelves to be exact. And there's a good reason for that. Palm oil is the reason toothpaste and shampoos foam up so nicely.

2:31It's why chocolate melts in your mouth rather than in your hand. And it's a really effective natural preservative for tons of food products. It's a dream ingredient for producers and consumers across so many industries. But there's a big reason why palm oil is also problematic, and it's not because of the ingredient itself. It's totally plant-based and biodegradable. It's perfectly safe to use in food and household supplies, cosmetics. The real problem is the way palm oil is made. The way most of it is harvested today is incredibly destructive to the planet. Because the trees that produce the magic ingredient only like to grow around the equator.

3:12And palm oil producers burn down rainforests to make way for more palm oil plantations, which disrupts habitats and makes the air toxic for entire countries in the process. There's a company called C16 Biosciences that wants to change all of this. It's doing that by producing a palm oil alternative. Shara Tiku helped co-found the company just a few years ago in 2018, but it was an early experience in her career that opened her eyes to the problem of palm oil. She was sent to Singapore for a business trip, and her company also sent her off with a pack of N95 masks with no explanation. And it's only when she landed that the reason became clear.

3:57As soon as I landed in Singapore, I understood why. The air was black. Wow. And I quickly learned the air quality index was over 400. And anything over 150 is dangerous, and over 300 is toxic. Yeah. And I was confused. And I started asking my my co-workers what was going on. And they sort of, you know, shrugged and said, oh, it's burning season for palm oil. And that was the first time I'd ever heard about palm oil. And people just sort of kind of said like, oh, yeah, it's just, you know, this happens all the time. Or like this happens every year. Like, yeah, this is normal. Mm-hmm. They did, and they weren't happy about it.

4:39I mean, I think they were deeply upset about it. When I was there, the government had closed schools and had advised pregnant women to basically not leave the house, not to walk outside. Wow. So people weren't happy about it in Singapore, but they were certainly used to it. It was something that felt inevitable and like the normal course of a given year. All right. When you start to ask questions about burning season, I'm assuming they weren't burning things in Singapore. What was going on? That's right. So my colleagues in Singapore started educating me and said, oh, you know, our neighbors in Indonesia and Malaysia, essentially they're burning forest.

5:18They're clearing tropical rainforest to convert that land into oil palm plantations to make this vegetable oil called palm oil. And the way that the winds were blowing that year were blowing the smoke heavily into Singapore. And they were sort of bearing the brunt of the consequences. So it's one of these things where you see this action, which generally, you know, the cost of emitting carbon dioxide emissions, those frequently go, you know, unaccounted for. But here they were having this very, very tangible cost on the health of people in Singapore. All right. So this is the first time you encounter sort of encounter anything around palm oil.

6:02And you kind of had this experience and you probably – it's probably lodged in your brain, but you kind of went on with your life. Yep. Like, you know, most people who encounter this. And a couple years later, you decided to go to Harvard Business School. And you, I guess you, while you were there, not intending to do anything around palm oil, this idea came back into your brain. What happened? Yes, that is absolutely right. And I think like many people, I sort of saw this shocking thing happen. I was surprised. I was confused. But then I just went on with my life. And so a few years later, I was getting my MBA because I was interested in this sort of little sliver of why there's so much innovation in academic research labs, particularly in biology, that doesn't get commercialized.

6:57and what levers could we pull to improve it? And I became friends with two people, Harry McNamara, who was getting his PhD at Harvard in physics and really sort of studying this field called synthetic biology, and David Heller, who was an undergrad at MIT studying bioengineering. And we became fast friends over the launch of the Impossible Burger. So the month that we met, which was in the fall of 2016, the very first Impossible Burger had just launched at Momofuku in New York. In Chelsea, yeah. And so, you know, here there is this sort of plant-based burger that's using biotechnology to make a plant-based burger better, taste more like meat.

7:45And it's launched with a Michelin star chef. And we thought that was the coolest thing in the world. So a few weeks later, Harry had gone on a trip to Costa Rica. And he'd gone with some friends from grad school. And when they're down in Costa Rica, they went to go check out the rainforest. And as they sort of show up, it's basically gone. There is no rainforest in the place that they'd been looking. And in its place, they had found these massive industrial agricultural oil palm plantations. And Harry had come back from Costa Rica and told us this story. And it instantly triggered deja vu for me from that trip to Singapore a few years prior.

8:22Wow. Wow. All right. So you meet these guys in this class. You all kind of bonded for Impossible Burgers. We had Pat Brown on the show a couple of years ago from Impossible Foods. It's a great story and how he built that company, an amazing product. And Harry goes on this trip to Costa Rica and discovers that some of the rainforests are being burned down to make way for palm plantations. So let's just pause and talk about palm oil for a moment because palm oil, I didn't know this until I started reading about you and researching for the story. It's in everything. It's like everybody listening to this right now will interact with palm oil today in some form.

9:09It's in toothpaste. It's in cosmetics. It's in food. What else? It is in 50 % of products on supermarket shelves. And like you said, every person touches it every day, including me who tries not to. But it's ubiquitous. And it is in everything from soaps and shampoos to lipstick and laundry detergent to most of the foods that you find at the grocery store, from peanut butter to cookies to frozen pizzas. Wow. Wow. And I guess we should at this point emphasize it is safe. It's not like plastics in everything. It's not like, you know, I always think about the clothes I'm wearing because apparently plastic is in everything.

9:52We ingest it all the time. Palm oil is not bad for you. It's actually a great ingredient because it's odorless. It's tasteless, colorless. So it doesn't like change the way food tastes or smells. And I guess it's a natural preservative too. So it's great as an additive. That's right. And that's what's so interesting about palm oil. It's the most popular vegetable oil in the world for a reason. It's actually really good at driving critical function in all of those products. It makes color retain on lipstick. It enables surfactants and laundry detergent to actually clean your clothes. It helps keep peanut butter or Nutella really spreadable and really smooth and really shelf stable.

10:36And it's not bad. It's a natural product. The only problem is the way that it's made. And I guess, I mean, the other thing about it is in the last like 30 years, really in the last 10 years, the palm oil production has just exploded. I was reading that in 1970, it was like 2 million tons. Yep. Today, it's 70 million tons. By the end of this decade, it's going to be$100 billion business. So I guess it's been more efficient to extract palm oil from palm trees rather than, you know, extracting similar oils like soybean or rapeseed oil from their plants, right? I mean, what explains this huge increase in palm oil use around the world?

11:18It's efficient. It's productive. So we can make a lot of it. But the reason that it has grown so explosively and will continue to grow over the next 30 years really comes down to the performance of palm oil as compared to other vegetable oils. And, you know, without getting into chemistry class, essentially it's got this profile, which is this profile of fatty acids, which gives it a melting profile, which enables things like chocolate to melt in your mouth and not in your hands. And so the fatty acid profile of palm oil is broader than any other vegetable oil. And it's unique because it's sort of half saturated and half unsaturated fats.

12:03And you just can't replicate that with any other fat and oil. And over the last few years, demand for a product like that has really, really grown, especially in food products, because it's just so good at what it does. If you tried to stop using palm oil, you couldn't. Because if you used soybean, for example, the product performance would be totally different. And no company wants to do that. And no customer wants that. So palm oil is this great product. effective, useful, except there's one huge problem with it. Can you outline the massive problem that palm oil presents? Yeah. It fundamentally comes down to the way that the tree is grown.

12:47It can only grow within about 5 to 10 degrees of the equator. Oh, wow. And so as this demand for palm oil has exploded, the industry has had to find new ways to produce more of it. And so to do that, they need to find this land around the equator. And when you look around the equator, that is the densest concentration of primary forest that we have on Earth. It's rainforest everywhere around the world, pretty much. And so to meet this growing demand, growers have been slashing and burning tropical rainforest, burning both the trees and the peatland, which is full of carbon. That emits billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the air, which is problem number one.

13:32It results in the killing directly or indirectly of the wildlife that lives there because these rainforest are massive biodiversity hotspots. And it displaces the indigenous communities which are in that land. And it contaminates both the air, as I mentioned from my experience in Singapore, and the water because as the land is converted from these tropical forests into industrial agriculture, you've got massive amounts of fertilizer going into the water. All right. So Harry comes back from this trip and he's talking about what he sees there. And all of a sudden the gears in your head and Harry's head and David's head start to turn.

14:12And you're thinking, I'm well, maybe this is the thing we can tackle. So, yes, I think it really started with that firsthand experience where Harry and I had both seen firsthand the massive destruction that was being caused. Yeah. And it was being caused to produce a vegetable oil. And it just felt insane that we were continuing in this way. And as we looked into it, we realized a few things that were quite interesting. And at this point, we're not interested in being entrepreneurs, by the way. We're just, you know, we're just digging in. Yeah. But it's a massive industry. It was$60 billion industry, palm oil alone in 2016 when we met.

14:52It's everywhere. And perhaps most interestingly, there was a really clearly articulated problem statement or demand statement. When we started looking at this problem, there were over 200 large consumer products companies, and there were nine countries, which had made public commitments to their stakeholders that they were going to stop using this conflict palm oil, which engaged in deforestation. And you're talking about like the Unilevers and the Procter & Gamble's of the world? Correct. Some of the largest consumer products companies in the world had made these commitments, but every one of them was failing because there was no viable alternative.

15:36And we first started to sort of look at agriculture and say, could you switch to another product? Could you switch from palm to soybean? Could you produce that more sustainably? And it became very, very clear that there was no existing viable alternative and that agriculture couldn't solve the problem. But there was this clear demand statement from the biggest buyers of palm oil. And that seemed like a problem we could solve. And it seems like a problem worth solving. All right. So you start there thinking, OK, let's see how we can tackle this problem. You explore alternative oils, but you keep coming back to the reality that palm oil is superior.

16:14It's a great product. Then the next question is, well, can you grow more sustainably? And the reality is you can't for the reasons you laid out. So where did you go next? So next we realized, you know, if it's not agriculture, you've got to think sort of radically different. And remembering that the palm oil itself is great. So getting a product which can look and function like palm oil, that's great. But how could we produce it differently? And watching what was happening with the Impossible Burger was an inspiration for us. And so we sort of said, OK, if fats and oils today come from animals and plants, what about the fungal kingdom?

16:59What about microorganisms like yeast and algae and bacteria? Could we use those to make an oil which looks and functions like palm oil, but with a supply chain that's more scalable, more sustainable, more predictable, that uses the sort of concept of biomanufacturing instead of agriculture? And that's where we got started. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, how a feeling of deja vu and a bond over impossible burgers inspired Shara and her colleagues to start C16 Biosciences, the company whose product, Palmless, could help save rainforests across the world. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

17:44One of the coolest things I did last summer was take my family to Athens, where we saw the Parthenon and the Agora and all those amazing neighborhoods and ancient historical sites. And one of the things that made it so awesome was the home we booked on Airbnb. We literally had a view of the Parthenon from our bedroom window. There was a hot tub on the top floor. We could sit in it overlooking the entire city. And we had a kitchen and access to markets, and we were in walking distance from all of the things you would want to see. It made the trip so, so amazing. And when you take your own vacation, that's actually a great time to host your home on Airbnb.

18:23Your place with your cool art collection and your handy kitchen gadgets. It might just be what someone else needs to feel right at home on their next trip. Plus, your earnings from hosting provide you with another income strain. and could even help offset the cost of your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. You know, one of the most surprising things about how I built this is just how many pitches we get every year. Tens of thousands of businesses reach out hoping to tell their story. Now, while we do try to read most of those pitches, we can't possibly read all, but we choose most of our guests through our own deep research.

19:06And that means my team and I spend hundreds of hours digging into companies, what they make, who's behind them, and whether their journey can inspire you. And that's exactly where Claude has become such an incredible thinking partner in my creative process. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough, the thinking partner that works with you to explore the things that fascinate you. Whether you're researching late-night curiosity spirals or working through complex creative challenges, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems together. For example, imagine I'm about to sit down with a founder of a snack company.

19:44I'll want to know what products they've released, how they've evolved, and which competitors they're up against. In the past, it could take hours to track down reliable details. We'd search articles, databases, reports. Now, Claude can give me a clear answer in seconds, and then I can decide what to dig into further. It doesn't replace my process, but it sharpens it. And that means I can spend more time doing what I love most, focusing on the human stories, the lessons, the decisions, and the struggles behind the businesses you hear on this show. Experience what collaborative thinking feels like at claude.ai.hibt and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

20:30This show is brought to you by American Express. Running a business means making countless choices every day, some small and some that can change everything. The business owners who thrive are the ones who are ready for whatever comes next. And having the right support behind those decisions can make all the difference. That's why so many business owners I talk to choose the American Express Business Platinum Card. It's built to help them move quickly and take their business further. And with five times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked through Amextravel.com, you can turn any business trip into a chance to earn more and invest in your business's future.

21:15Plus, you get a flexible spending limit that changes as your business does, adapting to where you are and where you're headed next. Because when it comes to growing your business, there's truly nothing like Business Platinum. Not all purchases will be approved. Terms apply. Learn more at go.amex.com.

21:46Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. My guest today is Shara Tiku of C16 Biosciences. It's a biotech company that's created a palm oil alternative that could transform palm oil production into a sustainable and eco-friendly venture. I read that in 2018 alone, and it's probably even worse today, the changes in land use in Indonesia and Malaysia in order to create more palm oil plantations resulted in more carbon emissions, CO2 emissions than the entire aviation sector, global aviation sector of that world. Isn't that shocking? Yeah. And it's a vegetable oil. It's a vegetable oil, yeah. And not to obviously knock Indonesia or Malaysia.

22:27I mean, it's a business opportunity. We live in a world that is run on principles of capitalism. And so the incentives are there to make more of this because there's a demand for it. And so they're burning land, clearing peat, releasing carbon, and then building these plantations because they can make more money. First of all, is there a sustainable way to do this? Because sometimes you see like sustainable palm oil or, you know, there's even companies that sell palm oil and it, you know, says we grow this sustainably. Is that true or is that kind of smoke and mirrors? It's been attempted and it comes with really good intentions.

23:11But the reality is it's really hard to confirm that the palm oil in your product has been grown sustainably. And it just comes down to these very complicated supply chains where if you were buying a bag of potato chips, it's nearly impossible to trace that palm oil and confirm if it came from land which did or didn't engage in deforestation. So palm oil can absolutely be produced sustainably. Most of it is not. Less than 20 % of it is. And it's really been capped at that amount. And it's really hard to have confidence if it has been produced sustainably. Okay. So producing palm oil from trees in a sustainable way obviously is challenging.

23:57And it's not really a feasible solution to the problem, which explains why so many companies have sort of falling short on their commitments to stop using products that lead to deforestation. So you guys set out to become like, I guess, like the impossible foods of palm oil, right? So where did you even start? I mean, first of all, I guess you have to figure out if this was possible. And was it clear to the three of you even before you began that you could actually create a synthetic alternative that would be as good as palm oil? Oh, no, absolutely not. It was just a guess, a hypothesis at this point.

24:35Yeah. So how did you start? So we looked to science, but we also looked to nature. So using microorganisms like yeast and algae and bacteria, that's been used for decades at this point to make products like insulin, to make flavors like artificial vanilla. And what we had started looking at was, you know, in nature, perhaps there are these organisms which are actually doing the work for us. You know, we want to use biotechnology as part of this, but nature herself is a scientist. And so we looked out into the natural universe and we started finding a group of microorganisms which were naturally oil producing.

25:24And so they'd actually evolved for centuries to make oil, just like the oil palm tree had evolved to make oil. There was a yeast strain that we eventually sort of down selected as a really compelling option. And when we started to look at that, we realized, OK, perhaps we could make an oil, which has got all of the properties of palm oil. Perhaps we could make it at scale. This is interesting. And at this point, we only had about$1 ,000. So we were pretty limited in resources. But we started doing some early trials and some early R &Ds, and we could make only a few milliliters of oil. But sure enough, it looked like palm oil.

26:02And you guys were doing this in, like, labs? Like, you just rent bench space or something? Labs is generous. We were doing a lot of this, like, in basements at the time, in kitchens. Or kitchens, yeah. And can you do this with off-the-shelf, you know, like, ingredients? If you're a trained scientist, yes. I think if you were at your average consumer, it would be a bit challenging. Yeah. You need a sanitary environment and things like that. Right. But you could, I mean, you could order the different components. And if you knew what you were doing, you could start to experiment, basically. Yep. And it's fermentation fundamentally.

26:41And so in the early days, we did work with conventional equipment. And it wasn't right. But, you know, we got a fermentation tank from a beer brewing company. And we got a lot of our ingredients from the sort of local beer brewing company. And that was a way when we didn't have much money, we could start sort of doing scrappy science to get some basic proof of concepts to see that there was something worth pursuing here. Now, I know with, and of course, the analogy is limited, but with something like Impossible Foods, for example, they use the leg hemoglobin. It's this nodule at the bottom of a soy, the root of a soy plant.

27:19And then with yeast, they can kind of create this textured protein that tastes like a burger. Is it a similar type of principle? Is that kind of what you were doing? It's similar. The difference is we actually found a yeast which was doing all the hard work. So the yeast was naturally making an oil like we wanted to. So instead of sort of finding the DNA responsible for producing oil in the oil palm tree and then importing that and genetically inserting it into a yeast, we actually found a yeast which could naturally make the oil that we wanted. And we've worked with it. We've used sort of the tools of biotech to improve that.

28:02But we found a yeast which was sort of the workhorse for us. It was doing a lot of the hard work. How long did it take you guys to get something that you thought, hey, this is kind of maybe cool? Pretty quickly, we realized there was something interesting here, probably within the order of a few months. And like I mentioned, we had just$1 ,000 on it. Wow. It took us much longer to be able to make something cool at meaningful scale. But pretty quickly, we started to see that there was something worth pursuing. And how long? I mean, from sort of once you kind of landed on the process, like how long to make the oil?