There’s an unsightly reality to the splendor merchandise we slap on our faces and an unsavoury reality to the meals we eat: many are made with palm oil, that is chargeable for the speedy deforestation of a number of the world’s maximum biodiverse forests, destroying the habitat of already endangered species just like the orangutan, pygmy elephant and Sumatran rhino.

But now the biotech enterprise says it has provide you with a solution – a artificial opportunity that does not contain burning down or clearing any rainforest. It says this can subsequently update herbal palm oil in the whole lot from shampoos, soaps, detergents and lipsticks, to meals merchandise like packaged bread, biscuits, margarine, ice cream and chocolate.

“Over the final 30 years, 50% of palm oil plantation increase has come on the arms of deforestation of tropical woodland and peatland,” says Shara Ticku, founding father of C16 Biosciences, one of the biotech corporations pioneering a artificial opportunity. “That is without a doubt the center of the trouble we are seeking to solve.”

Research continues to be in a pre-industrial stage, however there may be been high-profile hobby in its potential. Earlier this year, C16 Biosciences, a three-year-vintage start-up primarily based totally in New York, acquired a $20m (£15m) funding from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund sponsored with the aid of using Bill Gates and the likes of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Virgin’s Richard Branson.

C16 Biosciences isn’t the most effective corporation seeking to provide you with a artificial opportunity. Researchers are running on some thing comparable on the UK’s University of Bath and at California-primarily based totally start-up Kiverdi.

“GM (genetic modification) engineering has spread out new advances,” says Chris Chuck, professor of bioprocess engineering at Bath.