Green materials

Shanghai-based microbial technology firm Bluepha specializes in disposable tableware, straws, paper cup coatings and film bags. The raw materials for these products are derived from kitchen waste oils and fats.

"The raw materials for these items are generated from the food service industry, and through resource recycling, they return to the same industry. This forms an interesting and meaningful closed loop," said Li Shenghui, a senior R&D engineer with the firm.

He said that the enterprise has broken away from traditional disposal methods, transforming waste oil and gutter oil, which are persistent urban problems, into a raw material repository for high-value green materials, and resulting in the firm's core product, polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHA.

"We specifically used kitchen waste oil and other non-food biomass as raw materials for the second-generation carbon source for our PHA products, achieving efficient resource utilization of the waste oil," said Li. He added that using such materials to replace traditional petrochemical plastics helps reduce pollution from landfills and incineration.