Bio-degradable Plastic Made from Cattle Manure

Bio-degradable Plastic Made from Cattle Manure

One of the challenges for livestock producers especially with larger dairies or feedlots is what to do with the never-ending supply of manure.

A University of Idaho research group is working on a creative and exciting solution. Taking the manure and transforming it into bio-degradable plastic.

U of I's Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Erik Coats shares more details of turning a waste product into a useful product.

Coats: "The research group our focus is on resource recovery. We see a lot of value in waste streams that most everybody else just want to dispose of. There is carbon, electrons, nutrients there -- and opportunities to leverage things --- microbial processes that bacteria can perform to capture and recover and convert those nutrients into something of value. That is what we do. We combine fermentation and aerobic treatment and convert the manure to a biodegradable plastic that is quite similar to polyurethane or polypropylene depending on what we get out of our fermenter."

Coats says they are considering the biodegradable plastic to be used for non direct consumer products like planter pots or erosion control matting or print cartridge.

In the future the team hopes to move its research to a working dairy to implement the program full scale.

Previous ReportLamb Industry Input on Roadmap Study Requested
Next ReportHow the Government Shutdown is Affecting Ranchers