In Sweden, a 24-year-old student has won the James Dyson design award for developing a bioplastic made from potato husk.
Pontus Norquist received the 22 Swedish krona (USD2,445) prize for thickening a husk-water mixture and placing the mixture in templates for spoons and other cutlery. Norquist’s bioplastic items decompose in just a few months.
“Potatoes are starch factories,” that can be used to produce a variety of bioplastics, Dr. Qiang Liu, head of the bioplastics research team at the BioPotato Network, tells krishijagran.com. The BioPotato network, based in Canada, is a network of 30 collaborators looking for new functional food-ingredient and non-food applications for Canada’s potato farmers.