Kuala Lampur, Sept. 11 -- The next time we peel prawns at the dinner table, the shells will probably go straight into the bin. We rarely give them another thought. Yet those discarded shells contain a natural material that researchers are exploring as a possible ingredient for biodegradable plastics.

At Universiti Malaya, researchers from the Faculty of Engineering have investigated how prawn shell waste can be converted into chitosan, a natural biopolymer, and subsequently used to produce biodegradable plastic films. The work offers an interesting example of the circular economy in practice: taking something usually treated as waste and giving it another useful life.

This matters because Malaysia faces two waste problems at the same ti...