Biodegradable Tableware From Sugar and Bamboo - As Cheap as Plastic

Scientists have designed “green” tableware made from sugarcane waste and bamboo that doesn’t sacrifice any of the convenience or functionality, meaning it could serve as a potential alternative to plastic cups and other disposable plastic containers. Unlike traditional plastic or biodegradable polymers‚ which can take as long as 450 years or require high temperatures to degrade to a certain point—this non-toxic, eco-friendly material only takes 60 days to fully break down and is clean enough to hold your morning coffee or dinner takeout.

“To be honest, the first time I came to the US in 2007, I was shocked by the available one-time use plastic containers in the supermarket. It makes our life easier, but meanwhile, it becomes waste that cannot decompose in the environment.” Hongli (Julie) Zhu of Northeastern University.

To find an alternative for plastic-based food containers, Zhu and her colleagues turned to bamboos and one of the largest food-industry waste products: bagasse, also known as sugarcane pulp.

Winding together long and thin bamboo fibers with short and thick bagasse fibers to form a tight network, the team molded containers from the two materials that were mechanically stable and biodegradable. The new green tableware is not only strong enough to hold liquids as plastic does and cleaner than biodegradables made from recycled materials that might not be fully de-inked, but also starts decomposing after being in the soil for 30-45 days and completely loses its shape after two months.

Image source: northeastern.edu

“Making food containers is challenging. It needs more than being biodegradable. On one side, we need a material that is safe for food; on the other side, the container needs to have good wet mechanical strength and be very clean because the container will be used to take hot coffee, hot lunch.” Hongli (Julie) Zhu of Northeastern University

The researchers added alkyl ketene dimer (AKD), a widely used eco-friendly chemical in the food industry, to increase oil and water resistance of the molded tableware, ensuring the sturdiness of the product when in contact with moisture. With the addition of this ingredient, the new tableware—which is currently still in the development stage—outperformed commercial biodegradable food containers, such as other bagasse-based tableware and egg cartons, in mechanical strength, grease resistance, and non-toxicity. The tableware the researchers comes with another advantage: a significantly smaller carbon footprint. The new product’s manufacturing emits 97% less CO2 than commercially available plastic containers and 65% less CO2 than paper products and biodegradable plastic. The next step for the team is to make the manufacturing process more energy efficient and bring the cost down even more, to compete with plastic. Although the cost of cups made out of the new material ($2,333/ton) is two times lower than that of biodegradable plastic ($4,750/ton), traditional plastic cups are still slightly cheaper ($2,177/ton). However, we are getting closer and closer to closing this gap.

“It is difficult to forbid people to use one-time use containers because it’s cheap and convenient, but I believe one of the good solutions is to use more sustainable materials, to use biodegradable materials to make these one-time use containers.” Hongli (Julie) Zhu of Northeastern University