Cine’al Ltd., an Israeli nanotechnology start-up, is developing technology to turn jellyfish into “super-absorbers,” pushing the sea creature into the supply chain for diapers, tampons, medical sponges and paper towels. The pitch is simple enough: take a living thing from the sea, run it through nano-materials, and sell the result back as a disposable product that can soak up water and blood in seconds. The apparatus calls it innovation. The bottom line is another way to turn nature into commodity and waste into someone else’s problem.
Who Gets Turned Into Product
The material, called Hydromash, is described as dry, flexible and strong, and is made from jellyfish. It is allegedly several times more absorbent than the “quicker picker-upper” paper towels from the popular TV commercials. The process uses nano-materials and converts the jellyfish into Hydromash, which absorbs high volumes of water and blood in seconds. The process also adds nano-particles that allow for the addition of anti-bacterial and tissue-healing attributes, flexibility, colors, scents and more.
The technology is based on research done by Tel Aviv University’s Dr. Shachar Richter. Ofer Du-Nour, chairman and president of Cine’al and head of investment firm Capital Nano, said the company chose technologies in the medical and environmental fields that were proven and said the only issue was engineering the products to bring them to market. He said, “Right now, these items are made of synthetics, which take hundreds and thousands of years to break down.” He also said, “The technologies we chose [in the medical and environmental fields] are proven technologies. The only issue is the engineering to bring the products to market,” and, “We cherry-picked through thousands of companies to find these.”
What They Call a Solution
Du-Nour said one third of disposable waste in dumps consists of diapers and that a newborn baby generates, on average, 70 kilos of diapers a year, maybe more, in its first year. He said the result is a product that absorbs several times its volume, bio-degrades in less than 30 days and can compete with SAP on price. He said it is perfectly safe and offers a potential to clear up landfills and clear the oceans of the endless swarms of jellyfish, which can now be seen as commodities worth harvesting instead of pests.
He said, “I’m not worried about this, and in many products it’s likely that the consumer won’t even know about it, similar to many other products with ingredients that are derived from animals and plants.” He also said, “In fact, I think the use of this could eventually be required by governments that are spending millions of dollars to keep jellyfish out of tourist and harbor areas,” and, “There are too many jellyfish in the sea, and too many Pampers in landfills. Cine’al may have the ultimate answer to both those issues.”
That line about governments “requiring” the product is the familiar tune of top-down management: the same institutions that spend money to keep jellyfish away from tourist and harbor areas may also be the ones deciding what kind of disposable goods people are pushed toward using. The people living with the waste, the clogged landfills, and the industrial runoff do not appear in the sales pitch except as consumers.
Who Pays for the Disposable Economy
The article says jellyfish have been the bane of Israeli beaches in recent years because warmer ocean temperatures have made coastal waters more hospitable for them. During spring and early summer, millions appear near beaches, shoot their poison into the water and make swimming next to impossible. It also says jellyfish swarm near intake pipes and can clog them up, citing a case last November in Sweden when jellyfish got into pipes and clogged water intake systems of a nuclear power generator, forcing it to shut down.
The same system that produces mountains of synthetics and landfills full of diapers now presents a nano-engineered fix as if it were a clean break. But the article’s own facts show the hierarchy at work: industrial waste accumulates, coastal waters warm, beaches become unusable, intake systems clog, and the response is a marketable product built from the sea itself. The people at the bottom get the mess; the companies get the patent language.
The article says some species are eaten in the Far East and mucin, a chemical extracted from jellyfish, is used in drug delivery systems. In this version of the world, even the sea’s creatures are sorted by utility, extracted, processed, and assigned a price tag. Cine’al’s Hydromash is just the latest reminder that when capital finds a living thing, it looks first for a way to package it, sell it, and call the whole thing progress.