Plastic bags have become a precious commodity of late, but a bizarre new alternative could be making its way to baggage areas very soon.
Bioengineers are trying to replace the plastic used to make bags with a cheap new polymer – chitosan, made from the shells of crustaceans.
The research is the combined effort of scientists from the University of Nottingham and Nile University in Egypt, which has a serious waste disposal problem.
The packaging can be used for shopping bags and to wrap food – and may be better at preserving it than regular plastic thanks to its antibacterial properties.
Food is part of Egypt’s waste disposal problem, which sees rubbish regularly pile up on the streets in illegal dump sites. And making environmentally-friendly bags from plant fibres as an alternative to oil-based plastic isn’t an option as crop space is limited.
The prawn bags are biodegradable, so won’t contribute to landfill, and are greener than plastic, which is made from oil and takes more energy to manufacture.
The bioengineers turn the prawn shells into chitosan by adding acid to dissolve the backbone and then a strong alkali to give the chemical a long chain shape. After that, the packaging making process is pretty conventional.
Dr Everitt, who is leading the product testing in Nottingham, said: “Non-degradable plastic packaging is causing environmental and public health problems in Egypt, including contamination of water supplies which particularly affects living conditions of the poor”.
If successful, the engineers plan to approach British packaging manufacturers with the idea, so you could be buying prawns, wrapped in prawns, very soon.
