Turning food waste into bioplastics

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research 2:03 Turning food waste into bioplastics

By:

Luke Hayes

18 Jun 2024 684

This multi-disciplinary project brings together five faculty from three different institutions, along with numerous graduate and undergraduate researchers. The first-of-its kind pilot project will develop and demonstrate an affordable modular bioprocessing system to produce biodegradable bioplastics from food waste.

If you look at the whole food of supply train, we put a lots of energy, water, and capitals into to produce food. But unfortunately, 30 to 40% of food is actual waste ended up into the land fields. So we are trying to improve the sustainability by decreasing the food waste, then viable option. Let's use food waste to convert it into value added products. V value added product, maybe by fast, In commercially available bioplastics are PLA, which is polylactic acid, and it's advertised as compostable, but really only in industrial compostable systems, conditions that don't really exist in landfills. So we are trying to replace them with PHA, which is in modern nature. For biopic production, currently, the price is actually like ten times higher than traditional fossil fuel based plasty. So we are try to replace the trees to way to involve chemical with chemical or toxic and expensive. We are trying to only involve the physical meine. So if we could develop a model to convert waste to economic opportunity, I think this model could be a to every corner of the word.

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