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Technologies 1

• Bioplastics
  Humans have produced roughly 8,300 million metric tons of plastic since the 1950s, the vast majority of which has been thrown out as waste. Only about 9% of that plastic waste has been recycled and 12% has been incinerated, leaving 79% of it to accumulate on our land and oceans, harming the environment, the food...

News 4

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• Video/​Animation
  
  Solving Sustainability with Synthetic Biology
  April 25, 2024
• Research Spotlights
  
  Circe: Biodegradable plastic without the plants
  April 22, 2020
• Video/​Animation
  
  Saving the Planet with Robots, Microbes, and Nanotechnology
  June 5, 2019

Multimedia 3

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  Video/Animation
  Circe: Using Microbes to Make Biodegradable Products
  Current manufacturing methods release harmful greenhouse gases and pollution, and many of the products produced do not biodegrade, damaging our ecosystems even further. What if we could turn greenhouse gases into biodegradable products? Researchers at the Wyss Institute are using synthetic biology to make this a reality. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

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  Audio/Podcast
  Shrimp Shells Could Make the Green Plastic of the Future
  Unlike other forms of bioplastic, like those made from potatoes or corn, chitin plastic does not simply replace the carbon source for the polymer, it actually replaces the carbon-based plastic polymer, making it a totally biodegradable and sustainable material. Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute used chitin from discarded shrimp shells from a shrimp processing plant...

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  Video/Animation
  Chitosan Bioplastic
  In this video, the team grew a California Blackeye pea plant in soil enriched with its chitosan bioplastic over a three-week period – demonstrating the material’s potential to encourage plant growth once it is returned to the environment. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University