This university student created a plastic alternative out of fish waste

A 23-year-old Briton has cooked up a compostable compound she hopes will one day replace much single-use plastic – and its main ingredient is byproducts of the fishing industry.

Lucy Hughes created MarinaTex for her final year project in product design at the University of Sussex. It’s also edible and, she says, intended as an alternative to plastic typically used in bakery bags, sandwich packs and tissue boxes.

Her project began as an investigation into ways of reducing fish waste, around 50 millions tonnes of which is produced globally each year, the United Nations estimates.

To create a strong and stable compound, she added the molecules chitosan from crustaceans and agar from red algae to her scales-and-skin mixture.

Several months of subsequent testing culminated in the production of a flexible translucent sheet that forms at temperatures below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) and which James Dyson concluded was stronger than its plastic alternative, low-density Polyethylene.

MarinaTex also biodegrades in four to six weeks in home compost and does not contaminate soil.

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