vniow
Dec 9, 2002, 08:39 PM
Okay, so it's wasted food, not poop, but it got your attention didn't it?
(CNN) -- A meal you don't eat could return to your kitchen table not as leftovers, but as plastic wrap.
Using food scraps, biochemical engineer Jian Yu and colleagues at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute in Honolulu have come up with what they claim is an inexpensive way to make a biodegradable polymer.
The substance could be used in disposable products such as bottles, wrappers and even surgical instruments, according to the researchers, who recently published their work in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
Plastics engineers with the British company ICI began making this type of polymer about a decade ago, but they used pure sugar and organic acid, a much more costly process.
Food waste can reduce the expense by 40 percent, according to the Hawaii researchers. It contains more organic matter that can be easily digested by microbes for polymer biosynthesis, they said. (http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/08/plastic.food/index.html)
(CNN) -- A meal you don't eat could return to your kitchen table not as leftovers, but as plastic wrap.
Using food scraps, biochemical engineer Jian Yu and colleagues at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute in Honolulu have come up with what they claim is an inexpensive way to make a biodegradable polymer.
The substance could be used in disposable products such as bottles, wrappers and even surgical instruments, according to the researchers, who recently published their work in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
Plastics engineers with the British company ICI began making this type of polymer about a decade ago, but they used pure sugar and organic acid, a much more costly process.
Food waste can reduce the expense by 40 percent, according to the Hawaii researchers. It contains more organic matter that can be easily digested by microbes for polymer biosynthesis, they said. (http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/08/plastic.food/index.html)
