This powdery material from waste animal tissues called meat and bone meal can be recycled to produce eco-friendly plastics, scientists are reporting. Credit: Wikimedia Commons |
With
billions of pounds of meat and bone meal going to waste in landfills
after a government ban on its use in cattle feed, scientists today
described development of a process for using that so-called meat and
bone meal to make partially biodegradable plastic that does not require
raw materials made from oil or natural gas. They reported the finding recently at the 241st National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical
Society.
Fehime
Vatansever and colleagues explained that in 1997, the U. S Food and
Drug Administration banned the decades-old practice of feeding meat and
bone meal (MBM) made from byproducts of slaughtered cattle, sheep, and
farmed deer, elk and bison to those same animals. Other countries took
similar action. It stemmed from concern over the human form of Mad Cow
Disease, a very rare but fatal brain disorder that spread in the United
Kingdom from eating infected meat. As of 2010, only three cases of the
disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), had occurred in the
United States. The bans were to reduce the chances that meat and bone
meal made from one infected cow could spread BSE widely throughout
cattle herds.
“The
ban changed what once was a valuable resource — a nutritious component
of cattle feed — into waste disposal headache,” Vatansever said. “More
than nine billion pounds of protein meal are produced by the U.S.
rendering industry each year, and most of that is meat and bone meal.
The meal from cows had to be treated with harsh chemicals to destroy any
BSE and then put into special landfills. We thought we could keep meat
and bone meal from being deposited in landfills by using it to make
petroleum-free bioplastics.”
Vatansever
and her colleagues described development and successful testing of that
process, which uses meat and bone as the raw material rather than the
chemical compounds in petroleum or natural gas. They mixed the MBM
plastic with so-called ultra-high-molecular weight polyethylene
(UHMWPE), an extremely tough plastic used in skis, snowboards, joint
replacements, PVC windows, and other products. Their tests showed that
the MBM/UHMWPE plastic is almost as durable as UHMWPE with the bonus of
being partially biodegradable.
Any
of the BSE infectious agents that might be present in meat and bone
meal are deactivated during the manufacture of the plastic, Vatansever
noted.
“This
is just one way to reuse meat and bone meal, and it’s great because it
reduces the amount of petroleum needed to make plastics,” Vatansever
said. “We’ve also managed to create a strong, sustainable material that
is easy to manufacture.”
