Make a plastic cup from salmon sperm

Inventing eco-friendly plastic from salmon sperm

Researchers at China's Tianjin University have developed a sustainable, biodegradable plastic derived from salmon sperm and vegetable oils. This could be the most possible solution to the world's impending plastic pollution problem.

The substance is made by extracting DNA strands from the sperm of salmon and dissolving the genetic material in water with an ionomer, a polymer commonly found in adhesives, to create a flexible gel that can be molded into various forms. different. The material is then freeze-dried to form a shape.

The team's experiment created a cup with an old, wrinkled shape but did not do much harm to the environment.

The cup is made of eco-friendly plastic and the ingredients are salmon sperm.

The product looks like plastic but emits less than 5% of the carbon emissions produced during the production of typical polystyrene plastic.

"The DNA plastic we created is the most environmentally sustainable of all known plastics," said Dayong Yang, lead researcher of the study.

Dayong Yang's team found the invention demonstrated clear superiority in terms of biodegradability, production of by-products, carbon emissions, energy consumption and processing quality.

Dayong Yang's research comes in the context of scientists competing to find solutions to reduce plastic waste. In the US alone, more than 30 million tons of plastic are discarded annually, and only 8% of that is recycled.

Much of the rest ends up in landfills, while 1 to 2 million tons of plastic are left indiscriminately on land and oceans, which can then be broken down into microplastics that people and animals can consume at a later time. which do not know.

According to Infonet