Algae Bioplastic from refuse (omega-3 fatty acid)

In recent years, the recognition of fish consumption as a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle has led to the increase of fisheries and aquaculture production. Accordingly, an estimated two-thirds of the total amount of fish is discarded as waste (Coppola et al., 2021). Apart from the unnecessary food waste, a potentially “bigger” issue arises when the fish is left to rot which generates methane gas; a gas that has 25 times more potential for global warming when compared to CO2 [FAO]. Studies show that approximately 130 million tons of this valuable staple is wasted worldwide each year (Binsi, 2018). Hence, the proper disposal and recycling of fish waste is critical when addressing a sustainable strategy. The specific problem that we are working to solve is the growing rate of fish waste produced worldwide. We will address this problem by utilizing fish waste and converting it into a valuable resource of biodegradable bioplastics.

Besides the environmental impact of fish waste, the economic scale is estimated to be a projected $50 billion USD loss in the seafood market due to poor management of resources (Binsi 2018). Biodegradable plastics replacing petroleum plastics are able to enter a circular lifecycle while their transition period offers little to no harm to the environment and can enter a natural carbon lifecycle.

According to the EPA (2024), fish waste contributes to environmental problems with strict regulatory guidelines still contributing to organisms suffocating from lowered oxygen availability, pandemic level disease from rotting material and invasive species being transported from rotten material into non-native areas leading to ruined micro-ecosystems. Additionally, to promote tourism the aesthetics of fresh air without decomposition will contribute to a communities well being and health from aerosol transmission. The transportation of biowaste requires many resources to prevent contagion for disposal at sea because there are not solutions for recycling them on land other than for fertilizer compost.

Citations:

1. Binsi, P. K. "Overview of waste generation in fish and shellfish processing industry." ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, 2018.

2. Coppola, Daniela, et al. "Fish waste: From problem to valuable resource." Marine drugs 19.2 (2021): 116.

3. Environmental Protection Agency. (2024). Ocean Disposal of Fish Wastes. EPA. https://www.epa.gov/ocean-dump... 

4. “Fao.Org.” Climate Change | Pertes et Gaspillages de Nourriture Dans Les Chaînes de Valeur de La Pêche et de l’aquaculture | Organisation Des Nations Unies Pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture, www.fao.org/flw-in-fish-value-chains/flw-in-fish-value-chainsoverviewobjective/flw-in-fish-value-chainsoverviewfood-loss-and-waste-in-fish-value-chains/climate. Accessed 22 Apr. 2024.

We have developed a method that produces bioplastic through a fungal remediation system similar to a photobioreactor. This method utilizes sources from aquaponics of phytoplankton and omega-3 oil to supply an algae-fungal co-culture to produce a form of bioplastic. 

In this process, the system converts simulated fish waste through rancid omega-3 oil and debris from a continuous culture of phytoplankton that incorporates with the oil layer. Through photosynthesis, the extracellular matrix of the algae interacts with the fungi to create a lipid layer producing a bioplastic. 

This novel process uses no electricity, relying solely on photosynthesis, to convert a plankton-fungi culture into a bioplastic using plankton amino acid and lipid sources. Thus, in a novel method the algae and fungi are able to convert omega-3 oil and plankton debris (rich in omega oils) into bioplastic without synthetic catalysts or expensive pyrolysis techniques utilized in polymerization methods.

In five different repeats we were able to average 86% conversion of fish oil into bioplastic. The mechanical properties are qualitatively described as elastic compared to PET (conventional petroleum derived plastics), retaining its shape after stretching, and unable to be broken by water or oil from immersion tests. 

Citation:

1. Zhang, Jingsi, Çağrı Akyol, and Erik Meers. "Nutrient recovery and recycling from fishery waste and by-products." Journal of Environmental Management 348 (2023): 119266.

The main target population that we are addressing are those in first world countries that are looking to improve their recycling regulatory practices by incorporating our solution within a modernized bioreactor to produce bioplastic. For example, the European Commission introduced the Farm to Fork Strategy to support a more sustainable agri-foods system and reduce waste by making changes in agriculture and fisheries policies (Zhang & Akyol, 2023). Our solution is currently in the prototype phase with a proof-of-concept that allows for production using photosynthesis without electricity or need for expensive bioreactor equipment. Moreover, our novel bioplastic production method possesses the ability to impact current recycling practices in third world countries where fish waste often results in unnecessary fines, charges, and incarceration (Canada, Environment and Climate Change 2024). Due to our proof-of-concept being actualized in a certain manner, we have the advantage to address the unmet needs for 3rd world farmers where fish waste causes these severe legal repercussions.

In terms of Canada, our goal is to assist fisheries prevent violations. We would be able to work directly with regulations to have fisheries provide regular fish waste donations or charge for the service and pay them back for bioplastic sold. In addition, the production of bioplastic to be processed would assist a wide range of audiences requiring novel bioplastics for their work including 3-D printing companies. Finally, we would leverage large-scale nutraceutical companies including pharmacies with omega-3 oil refuse with need to recycle. 

Regionally, we would like to focus on the Pacific Ocean where 70% of the world’s fishing practices catches occur. Specific pain points could be addressed from our solution. For example, the Philippines suffers from over 30% of production loss, either due to low quality produce or considered waste due to low product quality and without having any and no apparent appropriate recycling procedures (FAO.org, 2024). Furthermore, regional producer China would be a relevant target population. Our solution could assist the largest producer of fish waste, where regulations are limited or unable to control the problem of accumulating fish waste polluting marine life.

Citations:

1. Canada, Environment and Climate Change. “Government of Canada.” Canada.Ca, / Gouvernement du Canada, 8 Feb. 2024, www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/managing-pollution/fisheries-act-registry.html. 

2. “Fao.Org.” Climate Change | Pertes et Gaspillages de Nourriture Dans Les Chaînes de Valeur de La Pêche et de l’aquaculture | Organisation Des Nations Unies Pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture, www.fao.org/flw-in-fish-value-chains/flw-in-fish-value-chainsoverviewobjective/flw-in-fish-value-chainsoverviewfood-loss-and-waste-in-fish-value-chains/climate-change. Accessed 22 Apr. 2024.

Our team has the framework to ensure we complete this project with an effective scale-up protocol. We are providing a biotech solution that offers help to governmental regulations of waste management and also industries that struggle with increasing income for their services and cannot afford appropriate waste management solutions.

We are Canadian citizens who are aware of the responsibilities that Canadian fisheries have for these pain points and would like to provide them with feasible and affordable solutions that are viable. Overall, we are citizens of the world, and these environmental issues must be addressed to mitigate the damage caused by pollution.

Within a more specific sphere of community, we are actively involved in the start-up field operating as a clean tech for this solution and the community has our full support. We have residency at Innovation Factory Hamilton and Brampton Entrepreneur Centre. Recently, our interest in this topic has piqued many interests in environmental causes including a conference on environmental issues called by the Mayor of Brampton. We are hoping that this solution will allow for greater dissemination of environmental issues and their respective solutions on a forum that SOLVE MIT can assist with in Canada.

We have tested a bioreactor system that does not use electricity and utilizes a cheap alternative for “plastic farming”. We are not at a stage for customers or beneficiaries (TRL-4). Our current milestone for this technology discovery is an isolated fungi and algal cell line while using a commercial brand of phytoplankton. The IP that we own are the trade secrets for the cell physiology optimization and for the application of cellular co-culture with substrate and cyclic resource management.

We are applying to Solve to identify technical barriers to reach market that would allow us to have a ecological and economics impact that would allow for benefits directly.

Technical barriers: We would like to have MIT solve and assist us with bioreactor solutions that can be optimized using the non-electricity solution and electricity solution.

Cultural barriers: We are aiming to connect to MIT solve to allow for access to these 3rd world areas and isolate using GIS the best ways to identify the fish waste issue.

Legal barriers: We have all the resources for legal from grants.

Financial barriers: We have some financial barriers for employee compensation and for establishing a marketplace compensation system.

Market barriers: Factory and CEPA-compliant production.

Our solution approaches the fish waste pollution problem by utilizing the fish waste and transforming it into a valuable resource -bio plastic. Fishery policies can be changed to reduce the amount of fish waste, however, it cannot be completely eliminated. Our solution solely requires the power of the sun which makes it a feasible recycling method regardless of the consumer’s access to electricity.  finding a viable solution for fish waste rather than regulations to ensure reducing ecological footprint, which it will. The solution finds not only a viable solution for fish waste it also produces a valuable resource. 

We are adding value to an otherwise wasted resource that only contributes to environmental insecurity. We are innovating a space where microeconomic underpinnings are still unknown so our expectations could catapult a new industry within upcycling waste resources.

Our method for bioplastic production will reduce the volume of fish waste which highly contributes to the greenhouse gas effect. Moreover, our biodegradable bioplastic allows for an environmentally friendly product that has many uses across all sectors of industry, such as manufacturing, healthcare, and agriculture. How we expect our solution to have an impact is through the economics of plastic recycling and the benefits of an environmentally friendly biodegradable one. Why our solution will have an impact is because there is such a need for recycling fish waste in an ecologically positive manner.

We are using the conventional scale of Technology Readiness Level. And our technology is currently at TRL-4.

Clean Water and Sanitation, Life Below Water, Climate Action: We are focusing on utilizing GIS satellite images to understand and target pilot areas where we can reduce the burden of fish waste and pollution and reduce CO2 emissions. Furthermore, we would like to test for microbial content of these areas before and after and identify microbiome changes and identify if these are helpful for life below water as well.

Affordable and Clean Energy: We are interested in leveraging solutions completely devoid of energy to small amounts required for photosynthesis allowing for affordable solutions to produce bioplastics where expensive pyrolysis and condensation polymerization techniques require a lot of energy.

Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, Reduced Inequalities, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production: Our solution would be able to change policy towards violations from fishers, it would allow for preventative methods to be completed by waste providers, such as ourselves, to better enforce regulations and reward organizations that adhere to law to increase their competitive advantage in a competitive industry. 

The core technology that powers our solution consists of an algae (Bio-Algae) producing extracellular-matrix that enables production of bioplastic from rancid omega-3 oil (simulation for fish waste). The bioreactor that we have chosen involves a live system with bio-algae, fungi and phytoplankton. The layers of the system are an oil phase with omega-3 oil where the fungi resides. The algae associate with the oil and water layer where phytoplankton and Bio-Algae provide essential gas exchange in a closed system for non-photosynthetic fungi for a stable system. The circular nature of hydrocarbon broken down by fungi for algae to convert into viable plastic is a type of symbiosis that is enhanced by the debris accumulation of phytoplankton (majority of their composition is omega-9 oil).

 Our solution is currently a technology that has been optimized without electricity or bioreactor. We are aiming to have this technology within a type of system to optimize our algal plastic production.

Abstract: https://docs.google.com/docume...

Evidence Figure: https://docs.google.com/docume...

We are a team of 8 consisting of a CEO, Founder and Director (R&D) as the executive member overseeing 2 part-time staff (unpaid interns) and 4 contractors that are involved in A.I projects. We are positioned to grow with an operating micro-instance to produce this algae plastic and also a laboratory to test various types of bioplastic composites that include various plastic wastes as additives.

We have been working on it for a year. The first 3 months have been identifying algae, the other 6 months was optimizing fungi for the oil remediation for algae bioplastic. Then 3 months for optimizing the phytoplankton component for the two week experiment for producing bioplastic. We are aiming for this year to be when we patent the system, algae and fungi respectively. In addition, we are aiming to produce a scaled-up system for producing algae.

Our future goals involve various composite plastics for production of plastics in a system. Conventional plastics are cheap and bio-plastics are very expensive.

We ensure our team is diverse by hiring equitable positions from racialized communities and aim to reduce gender gaps.

1. Objectives: Our business objective as a social enterprise will be to convert fish waste into viable bioplastic for commercial and industrial uses. 

2. Key Activities: The most important activity will be to source fish waste or produce omega-3 in a sustainable manner. We aim to use aquaponic culture of phytoplankton debris along with utilizing fish waste. We aim to scour areas of high pollution of fish waste (CO2 high in satellite GIS analysis) and also transport these materials safely to our facility to remove contaminants of waste and convert to bioplastic. In addition, our most important activity will be to process bioplastic into raw plastic for bulk purchases. 

3. Key Customers/Partners: Various partners would be interested at governmental to corporate levels. The federal government procurement for services and products that utilize and reduce fish waste is in accordance with acts that assist with adherence and compliance (Fisheries Act). Additionally, there are expedited patents for green technology, and we would benefit with the assistance from government to achieve patent status for our products and services.  Supermarkets with primary source of fish waste would benefit from our services to provide them with royalties based on their contribution of the green bioplastic we produce and sell.

4. Key Resources: The most important resource for us will be to procure fish waste. We aim to look for many sustainable ways to produce our algae bioplastic using omega-3 oils using this resource. We aim to utilize satellite to find common grounds for fishing and identify where government regulations have provided safe fish waste sites for us to follow on protocol. In addition, our ability to have a small facility for micro-instance bioplastic production would be very cheap to have photosynthetic production of algae bioplastic. In addition, the ability for us to transport these to our customers would require appropriate shipping contracts for local companies or abroad requiring bioplastics in bulk or our production for main use (cutlery, straws, etc.).

5. Value Proposition: The bioplastic market is over 96 billion and we are better positioned because of our solution utilizing recycled material, our own proprietary cell lines and low maintenance/energy solutions. In addition, our innovation is from secreted ECM and does not require full harvesting of all cells requiring reseeding of cells, simply additional resources to produce more bioplastic potentially increasing output and lowering our costs against a high-priced, established competitor.

6. Customer Segments/Channels: We aim to find out customers as a business-to-business service (collect fish waste to produce bioplastics and provide royalty for our services in a cash back method). In addition, we aim to market direct to consumer using e-commerce platforms and manufacturing to produce our own designs for interesting solutions (in-soles, racquets, bike suspensions, etc.). Currently, we already are clients to the government receiving multiple grants for our products and services, we aim for larger procurement deals that will allow us to provide them with more solutions in health care (bioplastic coated plates for organoid development, liposome technologies, etc.).

We are currently financially stable with our grants as a pre-revenue company. However, once we have gained regulatory approval for our bioplastic manufacturing method (CEPA toxicity approval) we aim to sell bulk orders of our plastics. In addition, aim to utilize designs to leverage our in-house knowledge of our plastic to sell specific designs to companies in sports & racing, for example.  

We have achieved grants for collaborations with research hospitals allowing us to leverage additional uses for our bioplastic in 3-D organoids and liposome technologies. In addition, we have received funding for patenting our technologies allowing us to be able to market and advertise our products unique features and out license for interested companies along with sell our product.

We also have other cell lines for cleantech solutions that we are aiming to out-licensing. We are active in producing viable industrial solutions from our cell lines that convert refuse. 

Thus, we are able to have a successful project with MIT while being able to collaborate on many additional environmental-driven solutions.