Would you eat 3D-printed biscuits made out of discarded PETs?
Your Back Page scrawler is, by and large, a big fan of research.
The never-ending quest to understand more about what makes life tick on this pale blue dot is to be commended, but there are some days when even we begin to question whether some endeavours are really worth the effort.
One such example to prompt an askance eyebrow is an investigation by boffins at Southern Illinois University Carbondale who have proven that it is possible to create tasty and edible bikkies made out of plastic waste.
The key to the process is specifically engineered yeast strains, created using CRISPR gene-editing technology, that are then reprogrammed to “eat” polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a widely used form of plastic commonly found in disposable water bottles, food packaging, and clothes.
According to the research team, the PET plastics are first broken down into digestible sizes using a process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution before the yeast microbes are given their opportunity to start feasting.
The ravenous yeast turns the plastics into a “slurry of proteins, fats, and acids” which is then combined with fibre, starch, and sweeteners to make them more palatable.
The next step is to feed this mixture into a 3D printer that then fashions the biscuits – or “cookies”, as the inventors prefer to call them – into whatever shape your heart desires.
So not quite as simple as whipping up a batch of Anzac biscuits on a rainy Sunday afternoon by any means.
Even more interesting, at time of writing, is that no-one in the research team had actually eaten one of these highly engineered cookies to ascertain what they might taste like, because they had yet to gain approval from the university to do so.
But they were quick to assure folks that the fantastic plastic will be a delectable treat.
“I think it has a pleasant, appealing aroma,” lead researcher Lahiru Jayakody told NewScientist.
“And it will taste good, too. We’ve not tasted it, but it smells good — that’s for sure — like a real cookie.”
Maintaining this Pollyanna-ish tone, the team told media the technology could “kill two birds with one stone” by not only addressing food insecurity but also reducing the amount of plastic waste humans love to generate.
Which does seem a tad over-optimistic, given the current cost of producing these plastic cookies is around $US60 ($A83) a kilogram, or more than 10 times the price of a family pack of Tim Tams, and we don’t even know if they taste any good yet.
Would it be too unkind to suggest that some research efforts might perhaps be better directed at looking at more practical ways to cut back the current 400 million tonnes of plastic waste being produced globally each year, other than trying to make eye-wateringly expensive biscuits out of it?
Send home-baked sweet treats and tasty story tips Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
