Eco Friendly Styrofoam Alternative

Location/Club:  Rotary Club of Shivamogga North, District 3182, Karnataka, India

As part of Swachhta Saarthi Fellowship (SSF)-2021 Programme, under Waste to Wealth Mission, from office of Principal Scientific Advisor to PM, GoI, Rtn. Dr Dhoolappa, M. is working on the community need assessment for this project. Also, he has developed the prototype of antimicrobial egg trays from feather waste.

Description

For Shimoga city with 322,650 human population and 150 chicken/poultry shops, the average mixed and wet poultry waste produced is 1.10 tons per day.  If we consider that approximately 30% of waste is non-feather(soft tissues) waste, after segregating we get 0.80 tons of wet pure feathers per day.  If all of feather waste is promptly segregated at source, minimally processed and  dried directly, it reduces to 1/4 of its weight (as wet feathers contained  approximately 75% of water).

Hence it will produce 0.20 tons per day of clean and dry feathers. (Potential to be a high value product to replace a hazardous thermocol i.e. 6 tons  per month.)

We propose FeatherBioPacks, the first fully compostable soft packaging material made  from feathers. It is lightweight and has outstanding thermal insulation. It is made from natural materials (feathers and a bioplastic binder) and is combined with  sustainable external packaging materials (such as recycled cardboard or recyclable  mailing bags) as a complete delivery solution.  It has been designed to match the performance of other leading insulation materials such as expanded polystyrene.