A small Italian company called Bi-on has found a way to turn sugar beet molasses into plastic. They way it works is, they mix the molasses with a bacteria that feeds on sugar during fermentation. It creates lactic acid and polymers that can be used to create a biodegradable substance, a plastic called PHA.

The company’s offices are not far from Italy’s biggest sugar producer, so Bi-on has plenty of sugar beet molasses to pick up. There are other biodegradable plastics out there, but they’re often made up of food particles, not actual trash. The entire field is called bio-plastics, and the company’s new product could help the world become less dependent on the oil-based plastics we mostly use now. And one of the best features of Bi-on’s sugar beet plastic is that it can be destroyed in water, getting rid of the mounds of plastic and waste often seen floating in our lakes and oceans.

You can read more about the story on Deutsche Welle. Let us know what you think!