2 S’porean Girl Innovated An All Vegan Leather By Using Food Waste
Singapore in 2019 itself has generated 744,000 tonnes of food waste and only 18 percent were recycled which are making a big impact to the growing food waste problems. While two students from Republic Polytechnic (RP) Diploma in Consumer Behaviour and Research course came up with the idea of turning food waste into an all-vegan alternative to leather.
Named SUSKIN, the project by RP students Wong Sokwei and Ong Kai Lin, where both of them has recently won the post-secondary category of Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow 2020 competition with their innovation, where this competition ensuring students to take a closer look at the current issue around them and think of a solution on how to make a more meaningful impact on the community with some great idea.
Kai Lin and Sokwei, despite not coming from a science background, both of them were driven their passion for sustainability to create leather alternatives after months of experiment and they manage to turn food waste into a textile through biomaterial engineering.
The leather production uses waste from the meat industry and also chemicals to convert the raw meat into the leather. Meanwhile, programmes such as Solve for Tomorrow, Samsung is empowering Gen Zs to innovate and develop society-changing solutions in a new technology-driven future.
image JBSamsung, SUSKIN