With cattle breeding at an all time high, manure¹ has become one of the world’s greatest environmental hazards, but one Dutch artist is using chemistry to turn into something that is both eco-friendly and valuable. Her innovative² technique turns manure into a variety of useful materials like clothing fabric³, bio-degradable plastic and paper.

 

因为全球畜牛量一直保持在很高水平，所以牛粪已经成为了世界几大环境公害之一。但现在，荷兰一位设计师正在运用化学原理将牛粪转化成对环境无害的有用之物，例如服装面料、生物可降解塑料以及纸张。

 

In recent years, scientists around the world have made great progress in their attempts to recycle cattle manure, including turning it into natural fertilizer and biogas, but Eindhoven designer Jalila Essaïdi didn’t think they were efficient enough to solve the global manure surplus problem. So she started on her very own solution, one that approached animal waste as a valuable material that could be processed into useful products. The results of her work prove that manure really is worth its weight in gold.

 

Working in her BioArtLab, Jalila Essaïdi discovered that cow manure provided both the base for a new, bio-degradable material and the chemicals required to produce it. She started by separating the waste, with the dry manure used to extract pure cellulose from the grass that cows eat. From the wet manure, she extracted acids used to create cellulose acetate, a natural liquid plastic. This was used to make fibers⁴, which are later turned into fabric or bio-plastics, but it can also be freeze-dried to create an aerogel.

 

The new material was named Mestic, from mest, the Dutch word for manure. Essaïdi claims that it has the same properties as plastic derived⁵ from fossil fuels, but is bio-degradable. Better yet, the degradability can be tweaked in the lab, making it possible to create materials that last for different periods of time depending on their purpose.

 

"This is not the first time that scientists are looking for ways to solve the manure problem, but it is the first time that manure is being considered as a valuable resource," the Dutch designer said.

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