Consumer and shipping packaging can be incredibly wasteful. Some companies are downsizing their packaging, but many products sitll come wrapped and boxed in ridiculous amounts of plastic, paper, cardboard - you name it. One designer has come up with a way to get rid of the waste by wrapping objects in bacteria, creating a biodegradable, custom-fitting shell. Both gross and exciting!
Mareike Frensmeier just won third place in the Cargo Packs 2020 challenge for his bacteria wrap idea called Bacs. The packaging is made by covering an object with a culture of the bacterium acetobacter xylinum, then starting a sugar feeding frenzy. This creates a "fibrous nano-scaled cellulose network" that encases the object and keeps it safe along its journey.
The Bacs system can be manipulated to offer damp, gel-like packaging for food, dry, paper-like packaging or freeze-dried, foam-like packaging for the most fragile objects. Now, I'm not sure bacteria wrap will ever take off but the idea of a world free of packing peanuts sure is a nice one.
via Treehugger
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written by crimsonbrass, November 10, 2009
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written by John at Cell Phone Recycling, November 10, 2009
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written by Shang Lee, November 10, 2009
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written by Kelly Packer, November 10, 2009
Manufacturers could ship in recyclable bulk containers. Retailers could sell unpackaged items direct from display. But it's the customers who like everything to be in a nice pristine box.
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written by VeruTEK Green Technologies, November 10, 2009
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written by mark, November 10, 2009
as a microbiologist, i can tell you that you would be better off packing your item in the "glucosic sugar" that is fed to the bacteria than in the cellulose made by the bacteria... the amount of material the bacteria could make in a reasonable timeframe is vanishingly small. This may work to "package" very small components (that were themselves either completely inert or wrapped in some other material to keep them from contacting the polymer), but any large scale packing seems far-fetched.
i would also add that beyond the yuck factor, it probably doesn't smell too good.
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written by Richard, November 10, 2009
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written by Michael Bayes, November 11, 2009
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written by Richard, November 11, 2009
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written by Brenda, November 13, 2009
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