Conventional food packaging materials are generally petroleum-based non-biodegradable polymers such as PET, PE, PP, PS etc. These materials could take up to 500 years to degrade in the natural environment. My research seeks an alternative to single-use plastic packaging and cellulosic fibres extracted from plant biomasses have a significant potential for this. These cellulose fibres are of different sizes and types extracted from three different locally grown agricultural biomasses - Miscanthus grass, Switchgrass and wheat straw. These fibres could be used to develop paper sheet-based packaging or moulded packaging.
