Skip to content
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Menu
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Happy News

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.

PrevPreviousWhat Scientists Saw Off Mexico Coast Had NEVER Been Seen Before
NextThese Extinct Wildcats Are Coming BACKNext

Recent Articles

Happy News

Jeff Bezos’s Ex Just Donated $70 Million To Feed America’s Seniors

April 14, 2026

MacKenzie Scott is doing it again. The billionaire philanthropist has made a $70 million unrestricted donation to Meals on Wheels America, the nonprofit organization that provides meals, social connection, and safety checks to more than 2 million seniors and homebound people across the United States every year. The donation comes

Read More
Happy News

Four Astronauts Just Came Back From The Moon And The World Watched Every Second

April 14, 2026

Four astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, returning home after completing the most ambitious human spaceflight mission in more than half a century. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, touched down in

Read More
Happy News

Dragonflies Can See A Color Humans Cannot And It Could Change How Doctors Treat Disease

April 14, 2026

Dragonflies have been darting through the sky for hundreds of millions of years, and scientists just discovered they have been doing it while seeing a color that no other insect on earth can detect, and that finding could have remarkable implications for medicine. Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan

Read More
« Previous Next »
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2026 HappyNews.