A Feather in Your Bottle Cap

News & Analysis
In the News Gristmill Blog Muckraker Podcast Features

Columns
Ask Umbra Victual Reality Weekly Recipes The Bottom Line From A to Green The Grist List

Support nonprofit, independent environmental journalism.
Donate to Grist.

ADVERTISING POLICY

[Advanced]

Read more about: agriculture | New Zealand | news | scientific research | all of these topics

Tools: print | email | write to the editor | subscribe | RSS

Researchers aim to turn animal waste into plastic

Posted at 4:42 PM on 29 May 2008

File this under "ew": Researchers in New Zealand have developed a process to convert animal protein waste -- that'd be blood and feathers -- into plastic. "The material we can produce has the strength of polyethylene, the plastic used in milk bottles and plastic supermarket bags, but it's fully biodegradable," says Dr. Johan Verbeek, adding, "Plant proteins have successfully been used to make bioplastics, but animal protein has always ended up gumming up the extruder." Mmm -- pass that milk bottle! The bioplastic would actually likely end up as agricultural sheeting, seedling trays, plant pots, and the like. Says Verbeek: "The aim is to stay away from any food packaging." That's probably for the best.

sources: The Engineer, Indo-Asian News Service, ABC Rural
see also, in Grist: Vietnam hospital waste turned into plastic utensils

ADVERTISING POLICY

< Previous | Next >

Comments: (3 comments)

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have a Gristmill account, log in below. If you don't have a Gristmill account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Happening in the States as well

I worked under a professor researching this at Virginia Tech.

http://renewablemat.bse.vt.edu/

by Orfintain at 5:12 PM on 29 May 2008

The yuck factor...

I agree the idea of it is gross, particularly if you are vegan, but it is creative. If feels like mainstream folks and businesses are really starting to look at "reuse" more seriously which is great. This is an odd interpretation of reuse, but as long most folks are eating meat why not. It is certainly better than using oil (that in reality is partially just really old blood and feathers...)

by Sapgirl13 at 7:01 AM on 30 May 2008

Great reuse

I'd love to be able to pot up my seedlings in former chicken bits. It's good to see a waste product being used to replace petroluem. We'll have chickens for a long longer than we'll have cheap oil, and the biodegradable factor is key.

Once it's plasticized, no one will be able to tell that it came from a bird, thus no gross-out. There will have to be some way to shunt the bio-plastic from the landfill to some sort of really intense composting operation, but that's a a system that needs a radical overhaul anyway.

Eat what you grow, grow what you eat

by PermieWriter at 12:23 PM on 30 May 2008

The comments of Grist users reflect the opinions of those individuals only, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of Grist, its staff, its board members, their psychotherapists, or their aestheticians. Got it?