Biodegradable

It’s always a bummer when you take something like a computer or TV out of its box, and realize that all that Styrofoam is just going to end up in the landfill. Although it can be recycled, due to transport costs and lack of market demand, most cities don’t do so. There’s also the fact that it’s made from petroleum – so it's a long way from being sustainable. Fortunately, though, an international team of scientists has recently developed a biodegradable foam. It’s made from clay and casein, which is a naturally-occurring protein in cow’s milk.  Read More

Girls rejoice! Salvation has arrived in the form of biodegradable ballet flats dispensed from venue vending machines as an antidote to the agony of wearing heels on a Big Night Out. As we breathe a collective sigh of relief, we ask “Why did no one think of this before?”  Read More

The 2010 North American Frost and Sullivan Award* for New Product Innovation of the Year has been awarded to Canadian company Solegear, for its 100 percent biobased Polysole plastic. According to Solegear, although many of today’s biopolymers come from a natural feedstock, they are compounded using synthetic additives. Polysole, however, utilizes proprietary additives that are entirely natural and organic. The non-toxic plastic is claimed to have high impact and tensile strength, and can be efficiently processed using conventional techniques such as extrusion, blow molding and injection molding. Its biodegradation point can also reportedly be tweaked, so it can maintain its molecular integrity until product-specific compost conditions are met.  Read More

Doctors have been using hypodermic needles for more than 150 years – but syringe vaccinations could be just about to be replaced by a simple patch you can stick on your arm with no medical supervision. The microneedle patches have an array of microscopic needles on them that penetrate the skin just deep enough to dissolve and deliver a vaccine without causing any pain. There's no sharp hazardous waste left over, they're no more expensive than a syringe, and most importantly, tests on mice are showing that microneedle vaccinations are significantly longer-lasting than deeper injections delivered by syringe.  Read More

People may joke about someone having a steel plate in their head, but in the case of punctures to the skull, that often ends up actually being the case - the hole in the bone is plugged with a permanent titanium-based patch. Researchers from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology, however, have just announced the development of biodegradable patches that stimulate the skull into healing itself. As the bone grows back in, the patches disappear.  Read More

Aiming to address the issue of “throwaway fashion” and its impact on the environment as landfill, students at Sheffield Hallam University have combined fashion design with engineering to create a dissolvable wedding dress. This truly "wear once" garment can be converted into five different fashion pieces before being dissolved in water leaving no environmental footprint.  Read More

According to the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA) over three billion retractable ball point pens and over 500 million mechanical pencils were shipped in the US in 2007. Many have since been lost – try looking down the back of the sofa – and will probably find their way into landfill. To address this problem Paper Mate has introduced a line of biodegradable pens and pencils that feature components that break down in soil or home compost in the space of a year.  Read More

Knee ligament damage is an injury all to common to sportsmen and women. The solution usually involves replacing the torn ligament with a piece of tendon from the leg, which is fixed to the bone by means of a titanium or stainless steel screw. Unfortunately, after a certain time another surgery is required to remove them. Now researchers have developed a screw that is bio-compatible and also biodegradable over time, making this second surgery unnecessary.  Read More

In recent years, polylactic acid (PLA) has attracted attention as a replacement for petroleum-based plastics. It is made from corn-starch, or other starch-rich substances like maize, sugar or wheat, and is biodegradable – reverting in less than 60 days in ideal conditions. PLA is already used as a material for compost bags, food packaging, and disposable tableware, and also for a number of biomedical applications, such as sutures, stents, dialysis media and drug delivery devices. Although its price has been falling, PLA is still more expensive than most petroleum-derived commodity plastics, but now a team of researchers has succeeded in simplifying the production of PLA and making the process much cheaper, meaning we could soon see PLA used in a much wider variety of applications.  Read More