Can canola straw replace plastic wrap?
Alberta researcher creates film that could divert trash and jobs
One industry’s trash is another researcher’s treasure.
For canola oil producers, the straw is the most useless part, often left behind when harvesting canola. But Marleny Saldana, a researcher in food and bioengineering processing at the University of Alberta, has created a new use for the leftover fibrous stalk — cling wrap, more popularly known in the kitchen as Saran Wrap.
“Canola is big in Canada, mainly in Alberta. We produce tons of canola,” she said. “We find that we are opening up a new use for residue that has no value until now.”
Saldana said she noticed that the straw is mostly composed of cellulose
and lignin, components that give tensile strength. She used the cellulose nanofibres found in the straw to make the seethrough, plastic-like film.
Her creation comes at an opportune time: in March, China started banning shipment from canola companies in Canada. Saldana believes her new product has the potential to create a diverse local industry for canola in Alberta.
“We have created a new product that has high value. If we can do this in a refinery or treatment of all this canola straw (here), then we are adding more jobs, probably sending some high-value product to other countries,” she said.
Canola straw isn’t the first discarded residue Saldana has experimented with. Previously, she looked into creating cling wrap from potato peels and the starch from cassava, a root vegetable native to South America. However, the wrap created from those products was not as strong as the one made from canola.
In fact, the cling wrap they made from the canola residue was 12 times stronger than the original wrap created from cassava starch.
Although Saldana says they have yet to conduct more experiments to figure out this cling wrap’s decomposition time into soil, once it is ready for the wider market, it will provide a natural alternative to the current plastic food wrap products.