By John Domen
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COLLEGE PARK, Maryland (WTOP) — Researchers at the University of Maryland are working on a new biodegradable plastic wrap designed to keep food fresh longer, and they’re using artificial intelligence to help perfect it.
The plastic cling wrap used to cover leftovers and place them into the fridge can help extend the life of food for a short time. But once it’s tossed, the plastic can linger in landfills for decades — or longer.
“Plastics are made for a few minutes use,” said Abhishek Sose, one of the researchers involved in this project. “They persist in the environment for like 500 to 600 years or so. But we want these plastics to go away as soon as we are done using them.”
Sose said those plastics aren’t going away anytime soon.
“They are persistent,” he added. “They have already entered our food chain … the water has been polluted, soil has been polluted through these plastics.”
But Sose, along with his partners Tram Le and Peter Chung, is using all-natural materials to formulate a new type of cling wrap.
The main ingredients include cellulose, which comes from trees, plus gelatin and chitosan, which is usually sourced from crab and shrimp shells or mushrooms. Because they’re natural ingredients, Le decided to test how they behave once discarded.
“By three weeks, you can’t even find the sample anymore,” she said.
The sample of cling wrap had decomposed, breaking down into the soil.
“This is made from nature, so it just comes back to nature. We don’t use any toxic chemicals in the process making our bioplastic,” she said. “So if you throw it in your garden, totally fine.”
Of course, no one is going to buy it if it doesn’t work.
To test performance, the researchers compared their wrap with commercially available plastic using two cucumbers. After one week, the difference was clear.
“The veggies that were available in our wrapped plastic film was sustaining longer, in terms of shelf life in the refrigerator. Those that were in the cling wrap — in the commercially available wraps — those were more squishy and they had a fungus growing on them,” Sose said.
“The material that we have developed has shown … the shelf life for these veggies are 1.5 to two times (longer),” he added.
Before it can be widely used at home or by grocery stores, the material needs to better resist water and oil. Moisture from steam or condensation, for example, could weaken the wrap in its current form.
That’s where artificial intelligence comes in.
Think about when you bake a cake: All of the ingredients you combine together — the sugar, butter, eggs and flour — work together to create just the right taste and texture. Change them around a little bit, and the cake itself will be different.
The same holds true here. Le, Sose and Chung are using AI to help them better predict how those different changes in the formula will impact the wrap they’re making.
Solve the water and oil resistance problem, and then they’ll focus on figuring out how to scale this product up for broader commercial use. The hope is that within the next couple of years those issues will be solved and it will be available for purchase at grocery stores.
In the long term, Sose said the process could help guide scientists replace other harmful chemicals used in everyday products.
“It’s just a proof of concept that we have shown for the bioplastics, but it could be transferable to other materials as well, which are impacting our health,” he said.
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