Four designers from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College have developed a series of machines that turn seafood waste into a biodegradable and recyclable bioplastic.
The project, called Shellworks, saw Ed Jones, Insiya Jafferjee, Amir Afshar and Andrew Edwards transform the shells of crustaceans into a paper-like material that could act as a sustainable alternative to single-use plastics.
The material consists of a mixture of vinegar and a biopolymer called chitin ? a fibrous substance that makes up the exoskeleton of crustaceans and the cell walls of fungi.
The designers can change the stiffness and flexibility of the material according to need
Despite being the world's second-most abundant biopolymer, chitin needs to be chemically extracted from its source before it can be turned into a practical material. After realising how expensive chitosan ? the commercial version of chitin ? is to purchase, and how time-consuming the available extraction processes were, the designers decided to develop their own method.
"We spent weeks trying to extract even a handful of chitosan, which was when we realised we needed the right tools for the job," said the group.
The team experimented to produce the five manufacturing machines
They invented five manufacturing machines, called Shelly, Sheety, Vaccy, Dippy and Drippy, with which to transform the crustacean shells into different objects, being sure to not use any additives in the process that could affect the recyclabi...