Browse Articles

Sweet potatoes are one of the most common starches in Taiwan, and sweet potato peels hold significant potential to make biodegradable plastics which can alleviate the environmental impact of conventional petroleum-based plastics. In this paper, Tsai et al created starch-based bioplastics derived from sweet potato peels and manipulated the amount of added glycerol to alter the plastic’s strength and flexibility properties. Their results indicated that higher concentrations of glycerol yield more malleable plastics, providing insights into how recycled agricultural waste material might be used to slow down the rate of pollution caused by widespread production of conventional plastics.

As levels of food waste continue to rise, it is essential to find improved techniques of prolonging the shelf life of produce. The authors aimed to find a simple, yet effective, method of slowing down spoilage in tomatoes. Linear regression analysis revealed that the tomatoes soaked salt water and not dried displayed the lowest correlation between time and spoilage, confirming that this preparation was the most effective.

Plastic debris can disrupt marine ecosystems, spread contaminants, and take years to naturally degrade. In this study, Wu et al aim to establish an understanding of the scope of Williamston, Michigan’s microplastics problem, as well as to attempt to find the source of these plastics. Initially, the authors hypothesize that the Williamston Wastewater Treatment Plant was the primary contributor to Williamston’s microplastics pollution. Although they find a general trend of increasing concentrations of microplastics from upstream to downstream, they do not pinpoint the source of Williamston’s microplastics pollution in the present research.

Here recognizing the growing amount of plastic waste in the oceans, the authors sought to develop and test laser imaging for the identification of waste in water. They found that while possible, limitations such as increasing depth and water turbidity result in increasing blurriness in laser images. While their image processing methods were somewhat insufficient they identified recent methods to use deep learning-based techniques as a potential avenue to viability for this method.

In this study, the authors determine optimal pH levels for maximizing isopropanol degradation in water. This has important applications for cleaning up polluted wastewater in the environment.

The authors analyzed biosolids from five Wisconsin wastewater treatment plants and suggest using KBr pellet FTIR as a simple and rapid method to start characterizing P species in biosolids.

Commercial Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) produce large quantities of waste material from the animals being housed in them. These feedlots found across the United States contain livestock that produce waste that results in hazardous runoff. This study examines how CAFOs affect water sources by testing for Escherichia Coli (E. coli) content in bodies of water near CAFOs.

Here, the authors investigated alternative methods to irrigate plants based on the their identification that current irrigation systems waste a large amount of fresh water. They compared three different delivery methods for water: conventional sprinkler, underground cloth, and a perforated pipe embedded in the soil. They found the cloth method to save the most water, although plant growth was slightly less in comparison to plants watered with the sprinkler method or pipe method.

The authors test whether basil can grow in a simulated Martian soil improved with a waste-based fertilizer called Milorganite.

Here, recognizing the recognizing the growing threat of non-biodegradable plastic waste, the authors investigated the ability to use a modified enzyme identified in bacteria to decompose polyethylene terephthalate (PET). They used simulations to screen and identify an optimized enzyme based on machine learning models. Ultimately, they identified a potential mutant PETases capable of decomposing PET with improved thermal stability.