Background

Plastic disposable containers and similar products made from fossil fuels have brought great convenience to our lives. However, they produce a huge amount of waste; 16 billion disposable coffee cups alone are used every year, producing an estimated eight million tons of plastic waste. It takes up to 450 years for some plastics to degrade. The main approach to dispose of the vast amount of waste is incinerating or recycling. Incineration releases toxic substances such as fluorine, chlorine, and carbides that can deplete the ozone layer and harm human health. Recycling is a better approach, though it is complex and involves costly pretreatments. Biodegradable materials such as wood fibers or recycled papers can substitute conventional plastics. However, they lack enough strength, and they may impose safety issues for food containers due to having residual inks and chemicals. Hence, there is a need for new alternatives to address the challenges of plastic-based and biodegradable containers. 

Technology Overview

Northeastern spinout, BioSUS, has developed a renewable and biodegradable material to produce green packaging or tableware. This material comprises natural fibers derived from lignocellulosic biomass feedstock. The manufacturing process includes mixing long bamboo fibers with short sugarcane bagasse fibers, pressing, and drying the fibers into molds to achieve the desired shape. The unique combination of fibers forms a highly interwound composite with superior mechanical strength. This material is highly cost-efficient since bagasse is a by-product of the cane sugar industry that is abundantly available and can be sourced inexpensively. The final product has an excellent performance required for food packaging, including low heavy metal content, oil stability, and excellent hydrophobicity. More importantly, this material can be biodegraded under natural conditions within 60 days, which is significantly shorter than the degradation time of synthetic plastics. 

Benefits

• Cheap 
• Scalable 
• High strength 
• Oil stability 
• High hydrophobicity 
• Low heavy metal content 

Applications

• Food packaging and tableware 

Opportunity

• Building business plan 
• Connecting with prospective investors