Mexican entrepreneur Giselle Mendoza Rocha helped develop a biodegradable plastic made from discarded orange peels and pulp, turning fruit waste into a material designed to break down in roughly 90 days.
Mendoza developed the project while studying economics at Tecnológico de Monterrey and later built it through GECO, a startup focused on transforming agricultural waste into alternatives to petroleum-based plastics.
The material uses orange residues that would otherwise be thrown away. Mendoza said Mexico’s large orange industry presented an opportunity because a significant portion of the fruit, including its peel and bagasse, ends up as waste.
“We offer a material that decomposes in 90 days made from orange waste,” Mendoza said in an interview published by Tecnológico de Monterrey.
GECO’s bioplastic is based on bacterial cellulose produced using orange waste as a feedstock. Research on the project described the material as flexible, transparent and biodegradable, with potential uses in packaging, agriculture, textiles and biomedical applications.
The process was developed with researchers including Fernando Vázquez Alaniz and Marlenne Perales García, who worked on the biotechnology behind the material while Mendoza led the entrepreneurial side of the project. Laboratory testing found that the resulting bioplastic could degrade in around 60 to 90 days.
The idea was driven by the contrast between short-lived plastic products and the long time conventional petroleum-based plastics can remain in the environment. Mendoza saw discarded orange material as a readily available resource that could be redirected into a useful product instead of becoming another waste stream.
The project earned Mendoza national recognition. GECO won Mexico’s Global Student Entrepreneur Awards competition, where she received honors for entrepreneurship and innovation, and the technology also drew interest from companies exploring alternatives to conventional plastic.
The material was developed at laboratory and startup scale, so it should not be read as a replacement that has already displaced conventional plastic across Mexico. Its significance lies in showing how agricultural waste can be converted into a usable biodegradable material with a much shorter disposal life.
