Universiti Malaya researchers turn prawn shells into biodegradable plastic film

Researchers at Universiti Malaya's Faculty of Engineering have converted discarded prawn shells into chitosan, a natural biopolymer, and used it with starch to produce biodegradable plastic films. In soil burial tests, the films began visibly degrading after three weeks and had substantially broken down by the fourth. The work links two Malaysian waste problems - food waste and plastic waste - but the material is still far from commercial use.