Would You Eat a Cookie Made From Upcycled Plastic? Scientists Propose a New Way to Deal With Waste and Provide Food in Extreme Environments

A cookie whose ingredients began as discarded plastic may sound like an experiment designed to provoke a reaction. But researchers are presenting it as a possible answer to a practical problem: how to make useful food from materials that would otherwise become waste. Their proposed snacks, known as µBites, are made through a process in which engineered yeast converts processed plastic along with agricultural leftovers into sweet food products.

The idea sits at the intersection of waste management and survival planning. Rather than treating used material as something that must simply be stored, buried or discarded, the work imagines a system that could recover value from it. The researchers see potential applications where ordinary supply chains are unavailable or difficult to maintain, including emergency settings after disasters and long-duration missions far from Earth.

Space travel is central to that case. Lahiru Jayakody, a microbiologist at Southern Illinois University Carbondale involved in the project, has pointed to the scale of a Mars journey: a return mission could last about three years. Under those conditions, every item taken aboard becomes important, and crews would need to make careful use of limited resources rather than depend on frequent resupply.

Food is especially challenging in that environment because it has to be carried, protected and rationed for a long period. The µBites proposal does not suggest that waste alone can solve all of those demands. Instead, it offers a way of thinking about onboard materials as possible inputs for food production after they have been broken down and processed. That approach could reduce the distinction between supplies, packaging and waste.

The project emerged from a broader effort to rethink astronaut nutrition. In 2021, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency selected 38 teams to receive $25,000 each for early-stage concepts aimed at feeding people on lengthy space journeys. The awards reflected a range of approaches, not a single agreed technology, and encouraged researchers to test ideas that might otherwise remain speculative.

Other selected concepts underscored that variety. One proposed producing protein by fermenting gases, while another focused on bread that could be baked from a package designed to serve more than one purpose. Together, the projects point to a larger question for space agencies: how much food can be brought from Earth, and how much might eventually be made, preserved or repurposed during a mission.

On Earth, the same logic could appeal in places where a disaster interrupts transport, power or access to conventional food. Turning local waste streams into something edible could be attractive if it reduced dependence on outside deliveries. Yet the distance between a laboratory demonstration and dependable emergency food is considerable. Any such system would need to show that it can operate reliably when conditions, equipment and available inputs are far less controlled.

The most immediate obstacle may be public acceptance. A vanilla flavoring can make a sweet snack more familiar, but it may not erase unease about an origin connected to plastic. That discomfort comes as research increasingly identifies microplastics in human bodies. Scientists have not established what health effects those particles may have, but the uncertainty is likely to shape how consumers judge food associated with plastic-derived material.

Skeptics, however, question whether the concept is practical as food, not merely technically possible. That distinction matters: a process may turn waste into an edible product under experimental conditions while still facing hurdles in cost, equipment, regulation, nutrition and acceptance. The proposal’s value will depend on how those competing demands are resolved.

For now, µBites are best understood as a proposal rather than a ready-made answer to food scarcity or waste. The research raises questions about safety, scale, taste and trust alongside its promise of resource efficiency. Its next significance may lie in whether engineers can demonstrate a convincing route from discarded material to food, and whether astronauts, emergency planners and the public would regard that route as acceptable.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine