![]() ![]() The University of Nottingham belongs to the research intensive Russell Group association. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It can be easily broken down into parts, making it an eco-friendlier alternative to plastic.Īnd while it has plenty of applications as is, it's also increasingly being used to make things like bangle boxes, utility trays, carry bags, gift boxes, and so on.įor weather, science, space, and COVID-19 updates on the go, download The Weather Channel App (on Android and iOS store).52★6′20″N 1☁1′49″W / 52.939°N 1.197°W / 52.939 -1.197 These utensils can also last for up to three years in storage if you can resist eating them! Cow dungĬow dung houses a wealth of minerals, including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and several others. Edible cutlery has a combination of simple grains and a touch of salt to produce a nutritious alternative to landfill-bound plastic disposables. So you can say goodbye to those terrible, flimsy plastic spoons. And several start-ups, including Bakeys, have figured out ways to make cutlery edible. ![]() With edible cutlery, you can simply chow down on your cutlery right after your meal. Have you ever finished your meal and felt like you weren't quite full yet? Well, we might just have the perfect solution. Just two pounds of shells can produce 15 biodegradable shopping bags! Millets, Rice, Wheat And to tackle the problem, the researcher and her team collected the waste and boiled it in acid to make the shells less brittle, eventually stripping it down to a plastic bag-like material. Once again, the ocean has come to the rescue, and it turns out biodegradable bags made from shrimp shells could easily dethrone plastic bags.Īn engineering professor at the University of Nottingham, UK, realised Egypt had an overabundance of crustacean shell waste. However, there's no arguing that they are indeed a promising alternative to plastic. The only hitch is that seaweed plastic alternatives are still in the early stages, and it will take a while before they're widely available. Further, it doesn't even need any fertiliser to grow. It is estimated to have 85% less associated carbon emission than equivalent plastic packaging. As one of the fastest-growing organisms on Earth, seaweed is a quick and sustainable material to use. That's not all they can also replace conventional plastic cling wraps, bags, straws and cups! These nifty macroalgae can also be used to make the packaging they come in. If you thought seaweed was only meant to be wrapped around sushi or added to soups, you're in for a surprise. They put these mats into moulds, and lo and behold, you've got an eco-friendly container, carton or canister!Įcovative is marketing this innovation as a replacement for traditional styrofoam (which usually takes 500 years to decompose), as this mushroom material can break down in a landfill in roughly 180 days. The company Ecovative Design mixes natural ingredients such as oats or hemp with fungal mycelia, which grows and binds the mixture into a solid mat. ![]() The mushroom's mycelia, which look a bit like fine, white hair, have become the basis of a new kind of fungus-based packaging material. Ahead of this World Environment Day - to be celebrated around the world on June 5 - we bring to you five plastic alternatives, and you can decide for yourself if they're genius or outlandish! Mushrooms However, some alternatives are just as bizarre as they are promising. And once again, researchers have been busy creating alternatives to replace this indispensable polymer. To tackle this environmental issue, inventors began to look for new synthetic and semi-synthetic alternatives.īut history has a way of repeating itself, and the very plastic that was supposed to save the planet is now contributing to its destruction. In the mid-1800s, animal-derived products like turtle shell combs, ivory piano keys and billiard balls were becoming scarce, and so were the elephants and some species of turtles. But it was never intended to be that if anything, scientists created it as a part of a solution. Today, plastics are the objects of most environmentalists' most horrifying nightmares. What Leo could not have fathomed was that by spurring a revolution in plastic production, he was inadvertently getting his hands bloody. He had just perfected the first fully synthetic plastic by combining formaldehyde and phenol under heat and pressure that he'd christened 'bakelite'. It was the summer of 1907 when Leo Baekeland, a Belgian chemist, was rushing to the patent office in New York. ![]()
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