Translator: Viviana Quarto Reviewer: Michele Gianella
Would you believe me if I told you this once was a carrot?
Today, I want to talk to you about how to transform a carrot
in a bioplastic.
But why the carrot?
Because in 2016, in Europe,
55 million of tons of vegetable waste were produced.
These wastes are not used,
they are somewhat thrown away, then either composted or incinerated.
But if I take this carrot
and instead of looking at it as something to eat,
I look at it from another perspective,
this becomes a material
one that has been perfectly engineered by nature
for its intended function:
growing, having a structure, operate until it's needed,
and then being reintegrated in the environment,
at the end of its lifecycle.
In order to do so, nature takes advantage of a lot of macromolecules:
of cellulose, pectin, lignin, hemicellulose and so on.
All these serve a special purpose:
support and strengthen
the plant's different parts.
But if I look at it from another perspective
and try to reverse engineer nature's machinery,
and eventually find a way
to produce this thing with this macromolecules,
wouldn’t it be a remarkable progress?
I could then do all the things that must not last long,
and I would find, in the process, an alternative to plastic.
This is the underlying idea
me and my colleagues of the Smart Materials lab,
at Italian Institute of Technology,
have been worked on for some years.
We developed a process
to convert vegetable waste in biodegradable bioplastic.
In the spirit of circular economy,
we'd rather process food industry's leftovers.
Therefore, in order to get our raw materials,
we call food processing companies
and ask them to give
their businesses' leftovers.
In general, I have to say,
their feedback is even too enthusiastic.
We typically receive huge bags of vegetable waste,
while all we need for our tests is a few grams at a time.
We've spent the first three, four years
adding and mixing vegetable waste
with other biodegradable materials,
in order to give vegetables new properties,
add features they wouldn't naturally have.
But what I want to talk to you about
is the last process,
one we've started developing a couple of years ago,
which is focused on producing materials and bioplastic
that are 100 percent vegetable-based.
We saw that using water, acidulated water,
and controlling the temperature and the process time,
we can dismantle nature's architecture
to combine all those macromolecules,
namely pectin and cellulose.
A plant's outer layer cells
are very well organised, and for a reason:
give the material the strength it needs.
As for me, after I dismantled them, I put them back up together.
But this time
I reassemble them in a completely random fashion,
Why?
Because, in the plastic we use every day,
molecules are actually cluttered.
So we managed to have a plant-based material,
whose cells are as cluttered as plastic.
This gets me the best of both worlds,
because plant molecules provide me
with a completely biodegradable bioplastic,
while my molecules' rearrangement
gives a plant-based material
a plastic-like strength and resistance.
If you think about it --
we're in bioplastic manufacturing since many years now,
and one day we set our mind to actually use these applications.
And so we did something that, I have to say,
every scientist and engineer is frightened about:
we left the lab, and talked with real people.
(Laughter)
We went to Bolzaneto veggie market
and tried to adapt our technologies
to that particular market,
to that market's leftovers,
in order to produce bioplastic for it.
The idea was to prove that our transformation technologies
trigger a new system of circular economy,
where market's waste
are turned into useful stuff for the market itself.
Roughly one year ago these days, we were in Berlin
showcasing the results of our research:
artichoke biodegradable pellets,
wires for the 3D printer,
tomato peel-based fruits baskets.
We proved "on the field", in a sense,
that plant-based packages are a fact,
ones that don't pollute at the end of their life cycle,
because they can be disposed of, they can be biodegraded.
They're made of plants.
This is very important for us,
because the packaging sector
accounts for 40 percent of all the plastic produced worldwide.
Forty percent of plastics becomes packaging.
But while a packaging's life cycle
is a few weeks, a few months,
the plastic it's made of stays for one thousand years.
Plus, these packaging, and this kind of plastic waste,
are the most likely to be spread in the environment,
because their collection, use and management
is particularly difficult.
Just consider how much plastic you've stumbled upon today.
How much plastic you can find in Righi's beach.
How much plastic you find
when you go to the sea, when you go to the beach.
And how much plastic is found in the stomach of animals,
how much plastic they eat.
And we eat them, shortly after.
Think about how much plastic is in fishes’ stomach.
What if that plastic wasn't ordinary plastic,
but our plant-based one?
How much happier would the fishes be?
I'm particularly keen on these technologies
because they allow me to think about a new paradigm
to produce all those things that must not last long.
I won't use plastic anymore,
fossil-based, non-biodegradable as it is,
because I can use natural, plant-based materials
that don't pollute when disposed of.
And I can consider designing materials
which are set to vanish when they're over.
Which, if you remember, was our initial goal:
reverse engineer nature.
By the way, we set our mind to only work with waste,
with the goal of optimizing our processes
for vegetable waste,
because we didn’t want to compete with the food chain.
Our waste are actually a renewable resource
and are generated all along the food supply chain.
Therefore,
unlike many corn-based bioplastics currently on the market,
corn that is specifically farmed to produce bioplastic,
we use something that is usually thrown away now.
This gives us the potential of improving sustainability
in two, not one, supply chains.
To the packaging, throwaways' supply chain,
I can provide new materials
that are biodegradable and made with renewable resources.
In the food supply chain, I can instead repurpose
all those piles of leftovers, currently thrown away.
And you may think now,
if those technologies are actually so cool,
why don't we see them everywhere?
Me and my workmates, last year,
we've been working to develop these technologies
proving that they are useful,
that materials, bioplastics can be made,
and objects can also be made of.
In order to take the next step, we now need companies
that manufacture these bioplastics,
designers who tinker and exploit these materials
design these new objects
and took advantage of this material's programmable biodegradability.
And then, we are scientists, we are engineers,
and we're homesick for the lab, for our natural environment.
We want to design new ways
to address other potential food chain leftovers' sources.
You might remember, if you have seen "Exploring the human body",
animals don't use cellulose as a building block,
but proteins.
Will I successfully reverse engineer proteins?
That's what we want to do, it's our next goal.
We will soon start a new project
focused on repurposing proteins,
cheratine proteins in particular,
which are found in animals' feathers,
which in turn are a waste of the textile industry.
"Circular economy", "Blue economy" are beautiful expressions,
but they are not empty,
just for mouthwatering.
They express the potential of a new way of life
for us as a society.
We need new technologies, and I've just shown you a couple.
We need to cooperate with supportive companies
to exploit our new materials, our new technologies.
with the ultimate goal of eliminating plastic altogether.
Because, in the words of the poet,
“Nothing comes from diamonds,
but bioplastic may come from waste”.
Thank you.
(Applause)