A 23 year old from the Niagara region has a clear vision of what he wants to do in life. As Lauran Sabourin reports, David D’Angelo has already carved out a niche for himself in the green manfacturing business.

David D’Angelo was 20 years old and still a student at Brock University when he bought a 16,000 square foot building in Welland, and started a company called Trivium Industries to manufacture bottles.

“Most kids don’t grow up saying I want to make plastic bottles when I get older.”

But not just any bottles – these are environmentally friendly bottles that look and feel like plastic but:

“That is all corn. There is no plastic in that bottle, no plastic.”

No plastic and all corn, these cosmetic bottles will compost in 180 days.

Look in the cosmetic aisle at the store and you see how overly packaged cosmetics are; packaging that will stay in a landfill forever. They say that more than 1/3 of the waste in landfills is cosmetic packaging that can’t be or is too costly to recycle.

“We developed a coating for the bottles that will extend the shelf life and protect the stuff in the bottle.”

Brock Unversity’s business incubator BioLinc is helping D’Angelo with this venture. Dan Lynch says “David’s hit on a good niche here using a unique material that has great environmental opportunities.”

His customers right now: small companies looking for custom bottles. Trivium’s Bob Birrell explains BioLinc “also stimulates and serves all those small industries that hire 2, 3, 4 people but gets them off the ground”

Neob, a cosmetics and lavender store in Niagara-On-The-Lake is one of Trivium’s customers. Environmentally friendly and green products are a wave that D’Angelo entrepreneur expects to ride well into the future.