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

Speed-Dating For Friends Is Here: Speed-Friending

March 25, 2026

America is in the middle of what researchers are calling a friendship recession, and the numbers behind it are striking. In 1990, about 3 percent of Americans said they had no friends at all. Today that figure has grown to somewhere between 12 and 20 percent, a shift that scientists

Read More
Happy News

The 2028 LA Olympics Just Revealed Its Official Look

March 24, 2026

The countdown to Los Angeles 2028 just got a lot more colorful. LA28, the organizing committee for the 2028 Summer Olympics, has unveiled the official visual identity for the Games — and it’s a breathtaking love letter to Southern California. Dubbed “LA in Full Bloom,” the design concept is inspired

Read More
Happy News

Dog Finds A Message In A Bottle That Crossed The Atlantic From Canada

March 24, 2026

On a wildly stormy morning on a beach in northeast Scotland, a dog named Maggie was doing what dogs do best: sniffing everything in sight. Her owner Mike Scott, a photographer who walks his dogs at St Cyrus in Aberdeenshire almost every day, noticed Maggie circling a dark glass bottle

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.