In Australia, a young aspiring scientist has turned shrimp shells into a biodegradable plastic.
Fifteen-year-old Angelina Arora took the shells from a local seafood shop and began experimenting on them at her school’s science lab. Together with a mentor, she was able to extract the chitin from the cells using hydrochloric acid and form the bioplastic.
“The dream is to basically have every single plastic in the world made out of my plastic,” she tells the Sydney Morning Herald.
Angelina also won the NSW Young Scientist Award for chemistry for her age bracket a year ago for making a plastic out of corn starch.