An easily biodegradable material that could be "part of a global answer" to single-use plastic pollution has won its inventor, British designer Lucy Hughes, the international James Dyson Award.
Hughes' MarinaTex bioplastic is strong, translucent and flexible, making it a possible alternative for single-use packaging such as bags and sandwich wrappers.
Unlike current materials used for these purposes, it breaks down in home food-waste or compost bins, and its key ingredients are fish scales and skin ? waste products that MarinaTex saves from ending up in landfill.
Hughes' prize for winning the overall James Dyson Award is £30,000. After winning the UK heat in September, she beat designers from 27 other countries to take out the international prize.
British inventor James Dyson, who every year selects the grand prize winner in the international student design competition that bears his name, said that the material had the potential to replace traditional single-use plastics.
"MarinaTex elegantly solves two problems: the ubiquity of single-use plastic and fish waste," he said. "Further research and development will ensure that MarinaTex evolves further, and I hope it becomes part of a global answer to the abundance of single-use plastic waste."

Hughes created MarinaTex for her final-year project in the product design course at the University of Sussex, from where she recently graduated.
She had set out to create something utilising a waste stre...