Christmas tree needles reused for paint and food sweeteners

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Springwise always admires those innovations that seek to help our planet become more environmentally friendly. Reusing waste products is a key part of this, with huge amounts of materials going to landfill unnecessarily. We have already spotted various such processes, such as ‘rewritable’ paper or using old food waste to help save the Great Barrier Reef. Now a PhD student from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering has found a means to reuse our festive waste.

7 million Christmas trees end up in landfill in the UK every year on average. Not only does this take up huge amounts of physical room and affect the decomposition of other materials there, but Christmas trees do not rot quickly themselves. They have hundreds of thousands of pine needles, which take far longer to decompose than other tree leaves. Even then, they emit huge quantities of greenhouse gases whilst rotting, thereby negatively impacting the carbon footprint of the entire UK. Cynthia Kartey therefore sought to solve this problem. She found that useful products, such as paint or food sweeteners, can be made from chemicals extracted from pine needles.

The complex polymer known as lignocellulose makes up 85 percent of the trees’ pine needles. This can break down into a liquid, bio-oil, and a solid by-product, bio-char, after applying heat and solvents. The process itself is cheap and environmentally friendly. The bio-oil typically contains glucose, acetic acid and phenol. These are the same ingredients typically found in many industries. For example, they appear in the production of sweeteners for food, paint, adhesives and even vinegar.

Takeaway: It can be the smallest things that we throw out that make the largest impact. Even though many would not consider their Christmas tree that they only buy once a year to be environmentally damaging, the knock-on effects are clear. Plugging these gaps in our system is vital for creating a sustainable future. What other steps can we take to slowly decrease our carbon footprint piece by piece?

Website: www.sheffield.ac.uk
Contact: www.sheffield.ac.uk/contact

Source: New feed 1