Generating solutions

In Canada, 2.8M tonnes of plastic waste was landfilled or leaked into the environment in 2016. Banning of single-use plastics is driving demand for biodegradable plastic (bioplastic). Medium chain length polyhydroxylalkanoate (mcl-PHA) resin has ideal properties for agriculture and packaging films, showing high flexibility, processability, thermal stability and complete biodegradation into simpler, non-hazardous compounds. High production costs of existing mcl-PHA have limited the market potential and applications. Using technology to efficiently transform food waste into higher quality biodegradable resins (i.e., mcl-PHAs) would be a possible solution. This project will enable scale up and commercialization of low-carbon biodegradable medium-chain length polyhydroxyalkanoate (mcl-PHAs), through validation and enhancement of a two-stage process that consists of mixed culture dry fermentation of food waste into medium-chain length polyhydroxyalkanoates (mcl-PHA) for use as biodegradable plastics.