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How Fish Are Helping Solve Our Plastic Crisis

MIT senior Jacqueline Prawira was watching butchers discard fish scales at her family’s Asian market when she noticed something remarkable: the scales were strong, thin, flexible, and lightweight, possessing the exact properties that make plastic so useful. That observation led her to develop biodegradable plastic like materials from fish offal that can be used for disposable products like grocery bags, packaging, and utensils, addressing one of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges as plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050. Unlike traditional plastics that last forever because “we basically made plastics to be too good at their job,” Prawira’s fish scale material and composite will degrade naturally in composting environments without needing much, if any, external help.

This isn’t Prawira’s first environmental breakthrough, as she previously worked in Professor Yet Ming Chiang’s lab to develop a low carbon process for making cement called silicate subtraction that enables compounds to form at lower temperatures, cutting fossil fuel use significantly. The same method is now being used to extract valuable lithium with zero waste through a patented process being commercialized by startup Rock Zero. For her achievements, Prawira recently received the prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship awarded to undergraduates pursuing careers in science, mathematics, or engineering. Featured on CBS’s “The Visioneers with Zay Harding” during Climate Week NYC, she shared her hope that daily life can become more in sync with the environment, so people don’t always have to choose between convenience and protecting the planet, proving that sometimes the answers to seemingly impossible problems are hiding in the waste we throw away every single day.

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How Fish Are Helping Solve Our Plastic Crisis

November 30, 2025

MIT senior Jacqueline Prawira was watching butchers discard fish scales at her family’s Asian market when she noticed something remarkable: the scales were strong, thin, flexible, and lightweight, possessing the exact properties that make plastic so useful. That observation led her to develop biodegradable plastic like materials from fish offal

Read More
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What Scientists Saw Off Mexico Coast Had NEVER Been Seen Before

November 30, 2025

Scientists aboard the Pacific Storm research vessel off the coast of Baja California in Mexico were finishing their morning coffee when a call came from the bridge that would end a five year search for one of the planet’s most elusive creatures. After firing a small arrow from a modified

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Pope Francis Brings Indigenous Artifacts Back To Canada

November 30, 2025

The Vatican has returned 62 indigenous artifacts to Canada, 100 years after they were taken from tribes to appear in a 1925 missionary exhibition in Rome that displayed over 100,000 items from cultures around the world. Pope Francis gave the items to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on Saturday,

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