Scientists Turn Plastic Bottles and Crop Waste Into Protein-Rich 3D-Printed Cookies
Finn's Take· TL;DR- Scientists converted plastic bottles and crop waste into protein-rich 3D-printed cookies using oxidative hydrothermal dissolution and engineered yeast strains.
- µBites cookies passed safety evaluations and received favorable smell ratings, though human taste-testing awaits institutional approval before production scaling.
- Technology could address food security gaps in resource-limited environments, but current $60/kg production costs make it impractical for solving global plastic waste.
A Cookie With a Very Unusual Origin Story
Chemical engineers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale are developing a NASA-backed process that turns toxic plastic into something surprisingly edible — and possibly even delicious. The result is a 3D-printed, protein-rich cookie called µBites (pronounced "microbites"), and it may be one of the most unconventional food innovations in recent memory. The researchers presented their results at ACS Fall 2026, the American Chemical Society meeting held August 23–27 at McCormick Place.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale researchers created µBites — protein-rich cookies whose core ingredients began as discarded PET plastic, the same material used in soda bottles, water bottles — and leftover corn stalks and leaves. The concept sounds like science fiction, but the chemistry behind it is grounded in a surprisingly simple idea. "We were trying to develop technologies for plastic upcycling to make more valuable products. We thought, why not focus on making food? Because plastic is carbon and food is carbon," explains Associate Professor Lahiru Jayakody.
From Bottle to Batter: How It Works
The process relies on something called "oxidative hydrothermal dissolution," a technology invented by another SIU researcher, Ken Anderson, a decade ago. All biowaste and plastic are carbon-based, and OHD uses water, heat, pressure, and oxygen to break biomass and plastic wastes into water-soluble carbon molecules — a slurry. That 32-step process transforms what was once a discarded water bottle into a carbon-rich liquid ready for the next stage.
Programmed yeasts then reassemble those fragments into proteins, fats, and acids, and a 3D printer extrudes the final mixture into cookie form. Flavor is added via baker's yeast engineered to generate vanilla flavoring directly from plant biomass, and a separate yeast strain converts ethylene glycol — a molecule found in PET plastic — into beta-carotene, a precursor the body transforms into vitamin A. The cookies are then shaped by the printer into the Greek letter µ, giving the project its name.
Not Quite on the Menu Yet — But Close
The cookies have not yet been taste-tested because the researchers are still awaiting institutional approval for that step. Their current data indicate that the µBites are safe to eat. For now, the team has evaluated how the cookies smell and whether people would consider eating them — and most participants gave the aroma favorable marks and said they would be willing to eat the cookies in situations where resources were limited.
Lead researcher Lahiru Jayakody called it "the first-ever, demonstrably safe-to-eat cookie with a Hedonic scale score greater than 6.5 from repurposed waste biomass and plastic." The team behind this 3D-printed food is using a $25,000 grant from NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge, which challenged teams across the country to create new food technologies capable of feeding astronauts on long voyages.
A Solution That Could Reach Far Beyond Space
Jayakody's team envisions future iterations of µBites as a valuable menu item in resource-restricted environments like submarines and even in space. However, the immediate benefits may be far more terrestrial: Jayakody cites recent reports that estimate global food demand rising as much as 56 percent by 2050, making around one-third of Earth's population at risk for hunger.
Not everyone is convinced the technology can scale to meet those ambitions. Right now, it's an expensive process, costing around $60 to produce a kilogram of cookies. "We produce 400 million tons a year of plastic waste. You're not going to turn it all into cookies," Jason Hallett at Imperial College London told New Scientist. "So it's not a solution to the plastic-waste crisis." Still, the team hopes to ramp up development with additional government funding and industrial partners that could help build a fully integrated and automated µBites system. In the future, Jayakody and his team hope to produce the main ingredients in the µBites using microbes — including the added starch, fiber, and sweetener. Whether µBites ends up feeding astronauts on Mars or communities facing food scarcity on Earth, the idea that a discarded water bottle could become tomorrow's nutrition is no longer purely hypothetical.