Lucy Hughes' Bioplastic Made From Fish Scales Just Won the James Dyson Award

Most people look at fish guts and think, “eww.”

Lucy Hughes looked at the bloody waste from a fish processing plant and saw opportunity.

Then a student in product design at the University of Sussex, Hughes was interested in making use of things people normally throw away. So she arranged to visit a fish processing plant near her university, on England’s southern coast.

She came away a bit smelly—“I had to wash even my shoes,” she says—but inspired. After tinkering with various fish parts, she developed a plastic-like material made from scales and skin. Not only is it made from waste, it’s also biodegradable.

The material, MarinaTex, won Hughes this year’s James Dyson Award. The £30,000 (nearly $39,000) award is given to a recent design or engineering graduate who develops a product that solves a problem with ingenuity. Hughes, 24, beat out 1,078 entrants from 28 different countries.

Hughes, who grew up in suburban London, has always loved to spend time near the ocean. As a budding product designer—she graduated this summer—she was disturbed by statistics like 40 percent of plastic produced for packaging is only used once, and that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea by weight than fish. She wanted to develop something sustainable, and figured the sea itself was a good place to start, given that the University of Sussex is outside the beach town of Brighton.

“There’s value in waste, and we should be looking towards waste products rather than virgin materials if we could,” Hughes says. Read more about Hughes’ project Smithsonian.com.

Recycling: Poorer Countries Can Now Refuse Plastic Waste Imports, Making System Fairer

Recycling: Poorer Countries Can Now Refuse Plastic Waste Imports, Making System Fairer

The world generated 242 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2016 – a figure that’s expected to grow by 70% in the next 30 years. But this same plastic is also a commodity that’s sold and traded in a global industry that generates US$200 billion every year.

Exporting plastic waste is one way rich countries dispose of their waste. By selling waste to firms that then send it to countries where recycling costs are cheaper, rich countries can avoid the unpleasant task of finding somewhere at home to dispose of it. Unfortunately, most of this waste is shipped to countries that aren’t equipped to properly manage it.

When wealthy countries export their plastic waste to poorer countries with weaker recycling capacity, those plastics are often dumped, eventually polluting the land and sea. But a recent UN decision could help those countries most affected by plastic litter and with the least capacity to manage it. Due to a little-known treaty called the Basel Convention, poorer countries can now say no to the deluge of exported waste.

House of Holland x Speedo Collab Uses Recycled Fishnet Fabrics For World Oceans Day

House of Holland x Speedo Collab Uses Recycled Fishnet Fabrics For World Oceans Day

Abandoned fishnets create havoc and life-threatening danger among for ocean creatures. And while there are significantly fewer fish alive and thriving in our oceans, Twice as Many Fishing Vessels are chasing them at sea, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Supporting the eco-glam looks behind the House of Holland x Speedo collab is relevant to people with style. But talking truth around the entire topic of fishing nets — good and bad — makes one an even better global citizen. Check out World Oceans Day.

All-You-Can-Eat Food Packaging Could Soon Be On The Menu

All-You-Can-Eat Food Packaging Could Soon Be On The Menu

By Sylvain Charlebois, Professor in Food Distribution and Policy, Dalhousie University. First published on The Conversation.

Within a year, single-use plastics and excess packaging have become Public Enemy No. 1.

A recent Greenpeace-led audit looked at the companies behind the waste lining Canadian waterways. Much of the plastic trash cleaned up from Canadian shorelines this fall was traceable to five companies: Nestlé, Tim Hortons, PepsiCo, the Coca-Cola Company and McDonald’s. All these companies are part of the food industry, which is hardly surprising.

With consumers looking for convenience and portable food solutions, this problem will not go away anytime soon. In fact, it could get worse if nothing is done.

Compostable containers

In the food industry, conversations about green supply chains focus on compostable and even edible solutions. Plenty of technologies exist.

On the compostable front, we have come a long way in just a few years. In 2010, PepsiCo Canada came out with the first compostable chip bag for SunChips. This new package was meant to completely break down into compost in a hot, active compost pile in approximately 14 weeks. Some tests concluded that it did not.

When Biodegradable Plastic Is Not Biodegradable -- Only To A Degree

When Biodegradable Plastic Is Not Biodegradable -- Only To A Degree

The idea of a “biodegradable” plastic suggests a material that would degrade to little or nothing over a period of time, posing less of a hazard to wildlife and the environment. This is the sort of claim often made by plastic manufacturers, yet recent research has revealed supposedly biodegradable plastic bags still intact after three years spent either at sea or buried underground. So un-degraded were these bags that they were still able to hold more than two kilos of shopping.

The study’s authors, Imogen Napper and Richard Thompson at the University of Plymouth, tested compostable, biodegradable, oxo-biodegradable, and conventional polythene plastic bags in three different natural environments: buried in the ground, outdoors exposed to air and sunlight, and submerged in the sea. Not one of the bags broke down completely in all of the environments tested. In particular, the biodegradable bag survived in soil and sea almost unscathed.

Maine Becomes First State To Ban Styrofoam Food Containers In 2021

Maine Becomes First State To Ban Styrofoam Food Containers In 2021

Maine is now the first state to ban Styrofoam food containers. The bill, signed into law on Tuesday, with an effective date of January 2021 prohibits convenience stores, restaurants, grocery stores, farm stands, and coffee shops from using containers made of polystyrene, which is more commonly referred to as Styrofoam.

Foam food containers made of polystyrene are among the 10 most commonly littered items in the US, and more than 256 million pieces of disposable Styrofoam products are used every year in Maine , according to the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

VOX digs deeper into the ban, exploring the complexities of banning the very lightweight Styrofoam.

adidas Launches What Could Be Most Disruptive Product In The World: Futurecraft Loop Trainer

adidas Launches What Could Be Most Disruptive Product In The World: Futurecraft Loop Trainer

adidas shares the good news that Spring 2021 will be the launch date of its first fully recyclable trainer that comes with a never-ending lifespan. Let’s hope that America has a new president then, who has already announced that the US is rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.

The adidas Futurecraft Loop trainer is a collab with Parley for the Oceans — an organisation working to raise awareness of the threat to the world’s oceans – to create the shoe, which will be made from reclaimed marine plastic waste.

“Taking plastic waste out of the system is the first step, but we can’t stop there,” said a statement from Eric Liedtke, executive board member at Adidas. “What happens to your shoes after you’ve worn them out? You throw them away – except there is no away. There are only landfills and incinerators and ultimately an atmosphere choked with excess carbon, or oceans filled with plastic waste. The next step is to end the concept of ‘waste’ entirely. Our dream is that you can keep wearing the same shoes over and over again.”

The Surprising Way Plastics Could Actually Help Fight Climate Change

The Surprising Way Plastics Could Actually Help Fight Climate Change

What do your car, phone, soda bottle and shoes have in common? They’re all largely made from petroleum. This nonrenewable resource gets processed into a versatile set of chemicals called polymers – or more commonly, plastics. Over 5 billion gallons of oil each year are converted into plastics alone.

Polymers are behind many important inventions of the past several decades, like 3D printing. So-called “engineering plastics,” used in applications ranging from automotive to construction to furniture, have superior properties and can even help solve environmental problems. For instance, thanks to engineering plastics, vehicles are now lighter weight, so they get better fuel mileage. But as the number of uses rises, so does the demand for plastics. The world already produces over 300 million tons of plastic every year. The number could be six times that by 2050.

Petro-plastics aren’t fundamentally all that bad, but they’re a missed opportunity. Fortunately, there is an alternative. Switching from petroleum-based polymers to polymers that are biologically based could decrease carbon emissions by hundreds of millions of tons every year. Bio-based polymers are not only renewable and more environmentally friendly to produce, but they can actually have a net beneficial effect on climate change by acting as a carbon sink. But not all bio-polymers are created equal.

Greenpeace Launches New Anti-Straw Campaign For Ocean Creatures | 'Trash Isles' Trailer

Greenpeace Launches New Anti-Straw Campaign For Ocean Creatures | 'Trash Isles' Trailer

Starbucks announced in early July that it will eliminate single-use plastic straws from its more than 28,000 company operated and licensed stores by making a strawless lid or alternative-material straw options available, around the world. Starbucks, the largest food and beverage retailer to make such a global commitment, anticipates the move will eliminate more than one billion plastic straws per year from Starbucks stores.

Starbucks has designed, developed and manufactured a strawless lid, which will become the standard for all iced coffee, tea and espresso beverages. The lid is currently available in more than 8,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada for select beverages including Starbucks Draft Nitro and Cold Foam. The lid is also being piloted for Nitro beverages in additional markets including China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. In addition, Starbucks will begin offering straws made from alternative materials – including paper or compostable plastic - for Frappuccino® blended beverages, and available by request for customers who prefer or need a straw.