Drew Wang is the principal investigator leading a team of researchers at Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. They're looking at how to turn the food we throw out into a biodegradable plastic we can all use.
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00:00 The world has a plastics problem. There's so much of it and none of it breaks down
00:05 very easily. America has a food waste problem. Billions upon billions of pounds
00:11 of food thrown out every year. Now though there's a potential solution to both
00:16 problems. Plastic made out of food waste. Amid the tall ceilings of this massive
00:22 lab, innovation is bubbling to the surface. We're trying to convert the food
00:28 waste to bioplastic. Drew Wang is the principal investigator leading a team of
00:33 researchers at Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Here is
00:38 the food waste. They're looking at how to turn the food we throw out into a
00:42 biodegradable plastic we can all use. Plastic going to the landfill, food waste
00:47 going to the landfill, where they don't do anything good there. Is there any way to
00:52 solve the two problem in one technology? It's a dual problem putting up big
00:56 numbers. The U.S. throws out 119 billion pounds of food and 40 million tons of
01:03 plastic waste every year. That's where their innovation comes in. Using bacteria
01:09 to turn the food waste into a material that can be used to make biodegradable
01:14 plastic. The USDA is keen on the idea, recently granting the project 2.4
01:21 million dollars to turn this idea into one that can be scaled up to industrial
01:26 sized levels, potentially within three years. The key is not a product, it's the
01:32 affordability of the technology. But first there's the dirty job of
01:36 collecting the needed food waste. We went to Hunan King restaurant to get this
01:42 raw form of food waste. We need to separate some recyclable waste from the
01:49 food waste to make it a pure food waste. Once that happens, the process gets even
01:55 smellier. It smells not very good, like feet. Smells like money we call it. Smells
02:00 like money because the technology potentially can make money two ways. One,
02:06 by having restaurants and commercial food businesses pay them to take away
02:10 their food waste. And two, by creating the biodegradable plastic. It's like a double
02:16 dip. We earn the money twice. So that's how to make this technology profitable,
02:22 sustainable. When all is said and done, the food waste looks like this. Just
02:26 feels like little plastic pellets. Yeah. All of these were using that technology.
02:31 Yes, right. So that's the final product we're supposed to see. The final plastic
02:36 product can be used in anything from the lining of paper cups to actual bottles
02:41 like these. All of it made from discarded food, once destined for the landfill and
02:47 now getting a new purpose. Maya Rodriguez, Scripps News, Blacksburg, Virginia.