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

Study Finds Ozempic Linked To Sharp Drop In Depression, Anxiety, And More

March 23, 2026

Scientists may have just discovered that one of the world’s most talked-about medications has a remarkable hidden benefit. A major new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry has found that GLP-1 medications like semaglutide — the active ingredient in Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus — are associated with dramatic reductions in

Read More
Happy News

The Happiest Countries On Earth Ranked For 2026

March 23, 2026

Every year, researchers survey people across 140 countries and ask them to rate their own lives, and every year the results reveal something worth paying attention to. The 2026 World Happiness Report has just been released, and for the ninth time in the past ten years, Finland landed at the

Read More
Happy News

Human Footprints Found That Rewrite The Story Of Our Origins

March 23, 2026

In the middle of what is now one of the world’s most forbidding deserts, researchers have found something that should not be there by any previous understanding of human history: the footprints of a small group of our ancestors, preserved in the dried bed of an ancient lake in Saudi

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.