Biodegradable Plastics Can Now Be Created From Seaweeds

Sea-weed eating microbes can now help us create Biodegradable plastics. These plastics produce zero toxic waste and can be recycled into organic waste.

Even though plastic accounts for up to 90 percent of the pollutants in our oceans, there are only a few environmentally friendly alternatives to this material use, says United Nations.

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Biodegradable plastic blends have been shown to decompose under various conditions like home-composting and anerobic conditions offering new options for their disposal.

‘By creating bioplastic from seaweeds, the scientists have created a plastic completely based on marine resources and that too in a process that is friendly both to the environment and to us.’

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Plastics which are made from petroleum products are themselves harmful to the environment, with an addition to that an industrial process by which they are created releases chemical contaminants as byproduct.

They even take hundreds of years to decay. So bottles, packaging, and bags in the oceans, endanger animals and pollute the environment.

The reasonable solution to this problem is bioplastics, which don’t use petroleum and degrade quickly, but it comes with the problem of its own.

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To create such biodegradable plastic: we need to grow plants or the bacteria in fertile soil and fresh water, which many countries, including Israel, don’t have, says Alexander Golberg from Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Sea-weed eating microbes can now help us create biodegradable plastics

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A new process created by researchers from the University of Tel Aviv University produces ‘plastic’ from marine microorganisms. This plastic, in turn, is completely recyclable as it turns into organic waste.

The raw materials used for this biodegradable plastic are multicellular seaweed. These plants produce a polymer that can be used to make bioplastics.

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According to Golberg, “There are already factories that produce this type of bioplastic in commercial quantities, but they use plants that require agricultural land and fresh water.”

“The process we propose will enable countries with a shortage of fresh water, such as Israel, China, and India, to switch from petroleum-derived plastics to biodegradable plastics said he.

Source-Medindia