Slaughterhouse waste may be used for plastics industry

It revealed this week that £3m of funding has been put into a Europe-wide research project called ANIMPOL, which is making progress towards the production of biodegradable plastics from animal scraps.

Currently most waste from slaughterhouses and animal rendering plants is incinerated but this means that some potentially very useful chemicals are sent up in smoke.

The scientists working on the ANIMPOL project say the lipids in animal waste – long, carbon-rich, polymer molecules – could be put to better use.

Half a million tons of these lipids are produced annually by the animal slaughtering industry in Europe.

ANIMPOL project leader Dr Martin Koller, of the University of Graz, Austria, said: “What we were thinking when we started this project is that nature creates polymers like these lipids, as well as proteins, free of charge – why should we incinerate them? It is clear that biopolymers will have an increased significance in the future.

“Asian and South American researchers have been making headway in recent years.”