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Bio-plastic made from fish scales wins U.K. James Dyson award - Big Think
Bio-plastics could prove to be a suitable alternative to single-use plastics.
And when you consider that the world consumes about 1 million plastic bottles per minute, the implications of plastics consumption are pretty staggering.
To help offset these environmental costs, University of Sussex graduate Lucy Hughes recently used fish waste to create a compostable alternative to single-use plastic. The translucent material, called MarinaTex, is made from fish scales and skin – materials that break down in food-waste bins within about four to six weeks. MarinaTex is also flexible and durable, showing a higher tensile strength than LDPE (low-density polyethylene), which is the most commonly used material in single-use plastic bags.
Bio-plastics could prove to be a suitable alternative to single-use plastics.
- The flexible bio-plastic, called MarinaTex, breaks down within about four to six weeks.
- One Atlantic cod contains enough waste to produce hundreds of MarinaTex bags.
- More than half of single-use plastics end up in the world's oceans.
And when you consider that the world consumes about 1 million plastic bottles per minute, the implications of plastics consumption are pretty staggering.
To help offset these environmental costs, University of Sussex graduate Lucy Hughes recently used fish waste to create a compostable alternative to single-use plastic. The translucent material, called MarinaTex, is made from fish scales and skin – materials that break down in food-waste bins within about four to six weeks. MarinaTex is also flexible and durable, showing a higher tensile strength than LDPE (low-density polyethylene), which is the most commonly used material in single-use plastic bags.