Partially-biodegradable plastic made from waste bone meal
Meat and bone meal (pictured above) has been used to create partially-biodegrable bioplastic
Article Summary
Creepy as it may sound, for decades one of the key ingredients in cattle feed was meat and bone meal (MBM), made from by-products of – you guessed it – slaughtered cattle. Sheep, farmed deer, elk and bison were also unknowingly eating their own kind. With the onset of the Mad Cow Disease scare in 1997, the U.S. and other countries banned the use of MBM-containing feeds, as it was believed that the disease could spread via the ingestion of infected animals' body parts. That ban has resulted in large quantities of MBM simply ending up in landfills. Now, however, scientists are suggesting that it could be used to make green(ish) plastics.
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