These Scientists Are Making Antibacterial Bandages Out Of Fruit Waste

By Travis Teo and Lee Ying Shan, World Economic Forum (Public License).

The organo-hydrogel bandages are also able to keep wound areas cooler and moist, which can help accelerate healing. Image: Reuters/Lee Ying Shan
The organo-hydrogel bandages are also able to keep wound areas cooler and moist, which can help accelerate healing. Image: Reuters/Lee Ying Shan
  • Scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore are transforming discarded durian husks into antibacterial gel bandages.

  • The process extracts cellulose powder from the fruit’s husks after they are sliced and freeze-dried.

  • The husks, which make up more than half of the composition of durians, are usually discarded and incinerated, contributing to environmental waste.

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore are tackling food waste by turning discarded durian husks into antibacterial gel bandages.

The process extracts cellulose powder from the fruit’s husks after they are sliced and freeze-dried, then mixes it with glycerol. This mixture becomes soft hydrogel, which is then cut into bandage strips.

“In Singapore, we consume about 12 million durians a year, so besides the flesh, we can’t do much about the husk and the seeds and this cause environmental pollution,” said Professor William Chen, director of the food science and technology programme at NTU. The fruit’s husks, which make up more than half of the composition of durians, are usually discarded and incinerated, contributing to environmental waste.

Other food waste, such as soy beans and spent grains can also be turned into hydrogel. Image: Reuters/Lee Ying Shan
Other food waste, such as soy beans and spent grains can also be turned into hydrogel. Image: Reuters/Lee Ying Shan

Chen added that the technology can also turn other food waste, such as soy beans and spent grains, into hydrogel, helping limit the country’s food waste.

Compared to conventional bandages, the organo-hydrogel bandages are also able to keep wound areas cooler and moist, which can help accelerate healing.

The researchers say using waste materials and yeast for the antimicrobial bandages is more cost effective than the production of conventional bandages, whose antimicrobial properties come from more expensive metallic compounds like silver or copper ions.

A durian wholeseller, Tan Eng Chuan, said he goes through at least 30 crates of durians a day during durian season – as much as 1,800 kg. Being able to use the parts of the fruit that are ordinarily discarded, he said, was an innovation that would make enjoying it “more sustainable”.

When People Turn to Nature to Solve Human Problems, Sometimes Nature Benefits, Too

Bioinspired solutions can be good not only for people, but also for the organisms offering the inspiration.

By Rachel Crowell, ensia (CC BY-ND 3.0)

Elephant photo by elCarito on Unsplash
Photo by elCarito on Unsplash

August 18, 2020 — African bush elephants can break through fences and destroy crops or large trees — including iconic and endangered ones. These missteps could be deadly to the elephants as people who see them as a dangerous nuisance demand they be killed.

However, a natural and non-lethal elephant deterrent exists: African honeybees. Elephants are scared by the sight, sound and even smell of the bees and their hives­­­. Farmers and conservation organizations such as Save the Elephants have installed hives along key fence lines. But the bees’ food and water requirements can make the hives costly to maintain.

What if, wondered Mark Wright, an insect ecologist and integrated pest management expert at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, you could design something that would mimic the pheromones emitted by alarmed honeybees, thereby also deterring elephants? Wright is developing a blend of substances found in honeybee alarm pheromones that could produce that effect.

Wright says he’s still perfecting the mixture — which uses synthetic versions of the compounds rather than extracting them from bees — so it can evoke a “consistent and gentle” deterrence response. “You don’t want 50 elephants storming around and crashing into things,” he says. However, if the blend isn’t bothersome enough, the elephants won’t leave.

Innovators have been using nature as a role model for decades. Sometimes the invention just benefits people. But, as in the case of Wright’s bee-inspired elephant repellent, sometimes nature can benefit, too.

Possible Payback

So-called “bioinspired design” often starts with identifying plants or animals that excel in certain functions, says Marc Weissburg, co-director of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Biologically Inspired Design. For instance, pitcher plant rims are wildly slipperyearthworms’ bendy bodies make them top-notch burrowers, and tammar wallabies’ leg tendons are optimized to power their repeated hopping.

Next, researchers and designers investigate problems the observed capability might solve. This approach does not always include an aim to benefit nature, too. “People are just getting their minds wrapped around how to approach this from the standpoint of intentionally designing something, using biology, for a specific [human-benefiting] purpose,” Wright says.

In such instances, innovations can still end up indirectly helping the organisms that inspired them, however. Take Werewool. The startup is working on using proteins found in jellyfish, coral and other organisms to create fibers with certain properties (such as color, fluorescence or stretch) built into them, according to co-founder and CEO Chui-Lian Lee. Werewool researchers have created a prototype of a coral-inspired, dye-free fiber that’s naturally colorful and fluorescent.

Since the fibers aren’t yet available commercially, it’s too soon to measure their impact. However, Lee and her colleagues say they are designing their products with the goal of reducing fashion-related pollution, including the release of microplastics, harmful dyes and finishing products into waterways. That could ultimately lead full circle to reducing harm to coral and jellyfish.

Baked In

In the case of ECOncrete, the links between nature-inspired innovations and benefits for nature are baked in from the start. The company manufactures artificial tidepools, seawalls and other products inspired by structures found in the natural world. These products, which are used to provide structure in coastal, marine and urban environments, are designed to be hospitable to specific ocean organisms, says Shimrit Perkol-Finkel, a marine ecologist and co-founder and CEO of the company. The structures provide storm buffering and help limit coastal erosion, helping communities avoid or reduce flooding and other storm damage.

Perkol-Finkel says that ECOncrete’s proprietary concrete mixture makes structures stronger and more durable than those made from traditional concrete, which benefits humans. She says that the structures have complex surfaces with textures and other design elements that are made to mimic natural features that are hospitable to certain species for which natural habitat is shrinking. This complexity is also less hospitable to invasive species, enabling these structures to increase biodiversity while discouraging the presence of nuisance organisms.

“We design for the marine life,” Perkol-Finkel says. “That was the goal.”

Clear and Direct Benefits

At least one organization has found the perceived limited direct benefit to organisms to be a deterrent to focusing on nature-inspired design. San Diego Zoo Global (SDZG), a nonprofit that operates the San Diego Zoo and related facilities, once had its own center for bioinspiration. The center closed after SDZG pivoted its focus from being inspired by nature to benefiting nature directly.

Nevertheless, interest remains strong in using nature’s inspiration to create the innovations of tomorrow. And for at least some, those creations will also benefit nature in return.

Editor’s note: Rachel Crowell wrote this story as a participant in the Ensia Mentor Program. The mentor for the project was Hillary Rosner. In line with Ensia’s ethics statement, we disclose that Ensia editor in chief Mary Hoff in another capacity recently wrote a piece for AskNature about coral proteins. Rachel Crowell included both in this story with no input from Ensia staff, and the circumstance is purely coincidental.   

12 Innovative and Surprising Solutions for Saving Our Seas

Photo by James Thornton on Unsplash

By Alexander Berry, Global Leadership Fellow, World Economic Forum (Public License)

  • The Ocean is critical to protecting the natural world as well as human life.
  • Digital platform Uplink is announcing it’s Ocean Cohort of 12 innovations tackling the biggest issues facing our seas.
  • Solutions from six continents tackle a range of challenges, from freight shipping and illegal fishing, to plastic pollution and the degradation of precious underwater reef habitats.

The Ocean is critical to protecting the natural world and preserving the futures of the billions of people who rely on it for their survival. It’s so important, the United Nations selected Life Below Water as one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) key for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all.

Life Below Water also inspired the first mission for entrepreneurs and change-makers developing new innovations and solutions through UpLink, a digital platform for scaling innovation and driving progress toward the SDGs.

12 of these Uplink innovators recently presented their ideas to a panel of experts and judges from across the industry at the World Economic Forum’s Virtual Ocean Dialogues. Their solutions tackle challenges from freight shipping and illegal fishing to plastic pollution and the degradation of precious underwater reef habitats.

Whether you are in Malaysia, Brazil, the US, Portugal, Fiji or Palau and you have a solution to an ocean issue, UpLink gives you the opportunity to connect to a global community that can help you.”

—Kristian Teleki, Director, Friends of Ocean Action

The World Economic Forum and Uplink will work extensively with the cohort over the next 4 months to scale the innovators’ impact, highlighting their work through social media, presenting them at ocean-focused events, and introducing them to experts and potential funders who can accelerate their ideas.

UpLink is on a mission to surface and accelerate ocean innovators from around the world. Here is the first cohort answering the call:

  1. Cubex Global – This digital marketplace for sea freight can maximize empty shipping container space while simultaneously protecting the planet with a more sustainable approach to ocean transport.
  2. Oceanium – This innovative biotech start-up is developing products like biopackaging from sustainably-farmed seaweed.
  3. Recyglo – This waste management and data analytics platform tackles plastic pollution at the source across southeast Asia.
  4. Madiba & Nature – These innovators recycle plastic waste and inspire entrepreneurs in communities across Cameroon.
  5. Unseenlabs – This special maritime surveillance service is breaking new ground in the fight against illegal fishing.
  6. OLSPS – This analytics company is preventing illegal fishing through a fishery data management system that can record and report marine and vessel-based information.
  7. Global Coralition – A coral reef restoration group using art as a vehicle to help alleviate poverty, implement water and waste solutions, and empower communities to activate grassroots climate change action.
  8. Life Out Of Plastic – A clean-up campaign that empowers citizens to take action against plastic pollution.
  9. Plastic LOOP – Innovators reducing plastic in dumpsites by formalizing waste picking.
  10. The FlipFlopi Project – The world’s first sailing boat made entirely from waste plastic, created to bring attention to the problems of single-waste plastic.
  11. Seafood Commons – A collaboration for the transparent and sustainable distribution of seafood worldwide.
  12. Pinovo – A zero-emission circular sandblasting system that prevents paint-based microplastics on rigs (and other marine assets) from entering the ocean.