Italian designer Emma Sicher created food waste using bacteria and yeast to invent eco-friendly packaging. So this was an attempt to create a sustainable alternative to plastic. The project, called “From Peel to Peel,” sees the inventor produce environmentally friendly food packaging and containers. This is done by cooking microbial cellulose, a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, with leftover fruit and vegetables. The microorganisms in the substance (also called scoby) react with fructose and vitamins naturally found in food waste to multiply and form cellulose layers. This is an important structural component in the walls of plant cells that helps them remain rigid.
Environmentally friendly packaging as an alternative to plastic
To make the material, fruit and vegetable scraps are soaked in water and acetic acid. The microorganisms convert the fructose and vitamins in the waste into pure cellulose until a gelatin-like material is formed. This mixture is then left to rest for two to four weeks, depending on the desired thickness, before drying at room temperature. After drying, the substance becomes a translucent layer that has similar properties to paper, plastic andHas leather.
The material can also dry on surfaces to create different textures and patterns. The smoother the surface, the shinier the cellulose will be. For example, a layer dried on a Plexiglas plate resembles plastic. The designer also experimented with different fruits and vegetables such as apples, potatoes, beets, grape pomace and hops to create different colors and textures of the material.
She hopes that her organic,environmentally friendly packaging as a replacementcould serve for the widespread plastic and paper packaging. The designer sees this as one of the main causes of pollution of the earth and the oceans.
According to the European Commission Eurostat, paper and cardboard were the most important packaging waste in the EU from 2006 to 2015 (34.8 million tonnes in 2015), followed by plastic and glass (15.9 and 15.8 million tonnes). A significant portion of this is in the form of food packaging.
The Italian wants the industry to start treating food packaging as a natural exfoliator for the items inside. The inspiration of Italian designer Bruno Munari is: “Nature is the first manufacturer of packaging in the world. Each shell or skin protects its contents accordingly.”
Advantages and properties for ecological use
“Most foods are packaged in materials designed to last, and most foods have a short life cycle compared to their containers,” the designer said. Through its development, environmentally friendly packaging follows the natural principle of functioning as an ingredient. The main goal is to get closer to nature again by offering a more sustainable alternative to what the food industry currently offers,” she added.
You can not only produce microbial, environmentally friendly packaging with less energy and resources, but you can also compost it with organic waste. The compost eventually becomes fertilizer for the soil. The cellulose is very absorbent, but at the same time more water-repellent than ordinary paper. This makes it suitable for many types of dry food such as flour, sugar, pasta, rice, tea leaves, dried fruits, etc.
You can also use the material as a container for short-term use. It is suitable as a holder for sauces, chips, sandwiches or for street food in general, as long as consumption is quite quick. Due to its high hydrophilicity, the natural environmentally friendly packaging is not suitable for containing water or oil-based substances. To do this, it would have to be treated with beeswax or natural impermeable surface treatments.
The designer hopes for a global scenario in which every region produces microbial cellulose films for packaging by recycling local organic waste, creating a more effective and dynamic economy. In a similar project, graduate Roza Janusz also used Scoby to create aAlternative to plastic food packagingto accomplish. You can either consume these after use, or compost them after consumption to enrich the environment instead of polluting it.
