How Coffee Grounds Can Beget Biodegradable Plastics
S. Himmelstein | August 22, 2018Coffee and the to-go cups used to tote the beverage around are growing sources of waste. The thousands of tons of spent coffee grounds landfilled worldwide every day might be repurposed to reduce the environmental burden of both coffee waste and plastic container disposal.
Researchers from Australia’s Macquarie University and New Zealand’s University of Auckland brewed up a method to convert coffee grounds into lactic acid, which can then be used to produce biodegradable plastics. A synthetic pathway was engineered to transform mannose, an abundant sugar found in coffee grounds, into lactic acid. This end-product can be used in the production of biodegradable plastics.
The process is based on the single-celled thermophilic archaeon Thermoplasma acidophilum, typically found in hot, acidic environments.
The researchers next plan to refine the conversion pathway, and improve the yield of lactic acid.
Design of a synthetic non-phosphorylative pathway for the conversion of spent coffee grounds into the platform chemical lactic, based on a putative mannose metabolic pathway from the archaeon T. acidophilum. Source: Macquarie University