Ethiopian packaging project offers helping hand to female farmers
In 2020 Ethiopia’s government took the bold step of banning single-use plastics, in a bid to tackle the country’s levels of plastic pollution. But implementing the new policy has been a challenge, since there is a lack of suitable alternatives. Half a million tonnes of plastic is still dumped, buried or burned in the country every year.
Now scientists at Bangor University’s BioComposites Centre are hoping that they can transform organic waste from Ethiopian crop residues including leaves from the false banana, or ‘Ensete’, along material from other more conventional banana varieties – into an alternative to plastic packaging, in a project that could also offer a much-needed revenue stream to the country’s female farmers.
Bangor specialists are working with two collaborators in Ethiopia the Ethiopian Pulp and Paper SC and the Bio & Emerging Technology Institute, , to investigate whether the fibrous leaves of the plant, usually discarded during food processing, could form a new type of packaging material. The research project is funded by Innovate UK’s GCRF AgriFood Africa Innovation Awards.
The leaves will be shipped from Ethiopia to the BioComposite team’s unique facility in Anglesey to see if their larger-scale processing equipment can break down the material to a pulp that can then form cardboard-like moulded packaging prototypes.
The project will provide valuable knowledge as to whether Ensete and banana leaf more generally is suitable for industrial processing back in Ethiopia.
Senior Research Fellow Dr Adam Charlton explains: “If the leaf and stem material prove suitable, we’ll produce a variety of prototype products that we can bring to a workshop with the company, inviting representatives of the government and the private sector, so they can see the rationale for moving beyond the feasibility study.”
The project has another dimension too; if larger-scale production is approved, it will benefit the country’s female-led farming groups who could supply the necessary biomass.
Although women make up half of Ethiopia’s rural labour force, their productivity is lower than male farmers, due to a lack of access to land and seed. Providing the crops for industrial processing could be an additional revenue stream for these women.
Bangor has decades of knowledge and know-how on processing a wide range of agricultural, forestry and food processing residues , but false banana represents a new test product. From the centre in Anglesey, the Bangor team are aiming to produce a variety of products: soft and hard fruit trays, pot moulds, and egg boxes – for the workshop later this year.
Dr Charlton says: “The potential supply chain infrastructure is already in place, since the Ethiopian Government and the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNDO) have set up special agro-industrial parks, where local farmers bring their different types of produce to be processed.
So if the prototypes are successful, and we can tap into local expertise, this could work for everyone and create a sustainable alternative to plastic packaging.”
Creating Aqualub: a nature-inspired biogel
The human body produces a variety of natural lubricants, from the saliva that helps us to swallow to the synovial fluid that helps our joints to move smoothly. But if our bodies can no longer produce these, perhaps because of illness or old age, it can cause a number of issues.
These include osteoarthritis, where a lack of fluid in the joints makes them painful and stiff – or dry eye syndrome, where tear ducts can’t produce enough fluid.
One of the most common problems caused by lack of natural lubricant is dry mouth, resulting from problems with saliva glands. This can make eating a difficult process and raise the risk of choking, as well as leading to tooth decay and resulting in expensive dental bills.
This is what Professor Anwesha Sarkar from the School of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds set out to resolve when she first started to develop Aqualub. This new product is a nature-inspired biocompatible aqueous lubricant, which she hopes can be a platform technology for solving several different medical issues, such as those mentioned above.
For example, around one in ten people in the UK suffer from dry mouth and it typically affects the elderly, cancer patients, and people with autoimmune diseases. Due to the difficulty it causes in swallowing, it can very often lead to malnutrition, as affected people often eat less. While over-the-counter sprays are available to remedy this problem, they don’t often work effectively.
Professor Sarkar’s new platform technology, Aqualub, is a microgel dispersion which is made of a mix of biopolymers and water. One of the common problems with over-the-counter dry mouth sprays is that they don’t tend to last long, as they get easily washed away by water. With Aqualub, however, the microgel dispersion sticks to the tongue and slowly releases the water over time. Not only does this help to tackle the problem of dry mouth, but it also means that you don’t have to keep reapplying this oral therapy, as it is not as easy to wash off.
During her time developing Aqualub, Professor Sarkar learnt several valuable lessons that other entrepreneurs can benefit from:
Get your commercialisation team involved early in the innovation process. If you think your idea is inventive and has a true business potential, it’s very important to involve your institution’s Research and Innovation Services, or commercialisation team, in the early stages. That can be even before you start generating any data – but it means the IP strategy can be effectively evaluated and even some proof of market study can be initiated to examine the translational potential.
Innovation is a rather bumpy road. You might think you have got a solid business case with reasonable opportunity size, business model and also also a clear plan for execution, so that there can be a spin out tomorrow – it’s not always that straightforward! Sometimes it requires lot more realms of data – technical and commercial elements are just pieces of the puzzle. Hence, it’s important to stay patient: keep talking to the commercialisation team, seek guidance, apply for various impact and catalyst funds and keep building the portfolio dataset efficiently.
Protecting a vital ecological resource with carbon credits
Mangrove forests are a critical part of tropical oceanic ecosystems. The only trees that can thrive in salt water, mangroves grow along coastlines, providing defence against erosion and ensuring vital habitats for biodiversity. But they are under attack from human activities such as deforestation, coastal development and the harvesting of fuel and timber.
Professor and ecologist Mark Huxham from Edinburgh Napier University is behind an award-winning community project in Kenya that has halted the destruction of mangrove forests by selling carbon credits, both to fund restoration work and to benefit the local population.
Selling carbon credits on the global market
Mangroves are among the world’s top ecosystems for carbon storage per unit area, and in 2008, Professor Huxham realised that the emerging market for carbon credits – by which businesses and individuals offset their carbon footprint by paying for projects that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – could provide an exciting opportunity.
Working closely with the Gazi Bay community and with scientists from Kenya’s Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, Professor Huxham and colleagues began a four-year accreditation process that involved multiple research initiatives, including modelling of predicted mangrove destruction and the accurate measurement of buried carbon in the forest sediment.
In 2013 the team launched Mikoko Pamoja – Swahili for ‘Mangroves Together’ – the world’s first community mangrove conservation project to be funded by the selling of carbon credits.
Professor Huxham says: “We had to go out and find our customers on the global market, and the first few years were tough. But we founded a charity (Association for Coastal Ecosystem Services) to provide a transparent and credible structure, and the volunteers, made up mostly of staff and students at Edinburgh Napier, helped hugely with the marketing and sale of the credits”.
Transforming village life
Seven years on, the project has successfully sold over 8500 carbon credits on the global market, raising over £70,000 for conservation and community development. An elected committee of local villagers runs Mikoko Pamoja, alongside a salaried project coordinator who helps to organise forest conservation, replanting activity and monitoring, all done by citizen volunteers. 117 hectares of mangroves have been protected, and new forests have been planted.
All remaining income goes to a community fund, whose expenditures have transformed village life. Professor Huxham says: “We’ve been able to supply water to a local school, where previously 800 children had no access to drinking water, and have installed permanent water points for the villages.” Rates of diarrhoea have halved since the installation.
Education is another focus, with money spent on new school buildings, furniture and textbooks, and the provision of a bursary and sponsorships. There have been measurable improvements in educational achievement.
In 2017 Mikoko Pamoja won the UN’s Equator Prize, which recognises outstanding nature-based sustainable initiatives that reduce poverty in communities. This helped attract funding for the setup of Vanga Blue Forest, another mangrove site three times the size of the original, in southern Kenya. The site is operational and its credits will be available to buy next year.
More than 20,000 mangrove trees have been planted across both sites, restoring degraded land, stabilising shorelines and supporting fish, crustaceans and other sea life.
Expanding the scheme to seagrass
Now, the researchers hope to expand Mikoko Pamoja’s carbon credits scheme to include seagrass, another crucial habitat for fish at risk of destruction from fishermen’s anchors and nets.
The success of the project has led to interest from other ecologists and conservationists, and similar projects have been set up in Gambia and Madagascar, with support from the team.
Professor Huxham adds: “Our long-term vision is to share our expertise and help others to flourish. We know that carbon offsetting is just one part of the response to the climate crisis, but for us it has provided the necessary financing to help protect these vital resources.”
Simulating cities to make urban transport safer and more efficient
Cities are demanding places to navigate. As road users, we encounter a variety of other cyclists, pedestrians and drivers, while negotiating a patchwork of signs, traffic lights, vehicles, and road markings.
City planners, policymakers, and vehicle manufacturers want to make these complicated environments as safe as possible, while also tackling other transport-related challenges such as congestion and air pollution. But how can they tell if a change they plan to make is going to improve things, or simply make them worse? As new technologies are introduced to our vehicles and roads, it is important to understand their impact on individuals and our transport ecosystem.
One approach is to use simulations of the road and vehicles to enable the safe testing of interactions between road users in current and future environments. Over the past 29 years, researchers at the University of Leeds have used a range of “human-in-the-loop” virtual reality simulators to study how people respond to new and developing technologies. They have developed a world-class suite of facilities, that are currently the most advanced in the UK. Housed together at the Virtuocity facility, this set of linked simulators provide a highly immersive and adaptable virtual environment for studying the factors that influence human behaviour so that future road transport can be safer, more efficient, and sustainable.
“With the introduction of more advanced driver assistance systems in our cars and other technologies on the road, it is becoming ever more important to understand how these systems affect road user behaviour and safety,” explained Professor Natasha Merat, Chair in Human Factors of Transport Systems at the University of Leeds, who leads research at Virtuocity.
As autonomous vehicles become more common on our roads, this kind of research is going to crucial for informing decisions about the technology development. For example, it will be important to understand how human road users and autonomous vehicles interact at certain traffic hotspots, such as at junctions or narrow sections of road where oncoming vehicles may need to give way to each other. “If you know the vehicle coming from the other direction is autonomous, how might that change your behaviour?” said Peter Woodthorpe, programme manager of Virtuocity. “How aggressive or submissive does the autonomous vehicle need to be in that situation to ensure it doesn’t just get trapped with a large queue of traffic behind it?”
This is just the sort of situation that the researchers at Virtuocity can test. The team includes engineers, industrial designers, computer scientists, psychologists, ergonomists, and human factors specialists. They work with a wide range of partners, from car manufacturers and tier one technology suppliers to road infrastructure agencies, such as National Highways.
As the simulation software is programmed in-house by the team, it can be tailored to the exact needs of the experiment. With eight degrees of motion and the ability to generate realistic acceleration forces, the simulator provides an immersive environment, in a real car, which is encased in a bespoke dome. An array of sensors can monitor driving behaviours such as steering and braking, reaction to external events, distraction and stress levels. These can be used to study, for example, how drivers behave at junctions when faced with different levels of traffic, or reaction times while tired or when talking on a mobile phone.
The simulator also allows the team to set up scenarios that are only rarely encountered in the real world and could be potentially dangerous to do on test tracks.
“Virtuocity allows us to look at these interactions in a safe environment, investigating the effect of technologies not yet in production,” said Professor Merat.
For example, the researchers might what cues people use before they pull out of junctions by changing gap between cars and their speed. “We might also look at what the reaction times might be when an autonomous vehicle asks a driver to take back control,” said Woodthorpe. “Doing those on a test track is going to be expensive and could be potentially dangerous if we start adding in additional cognitive loading tasks to see how that might distract the driver.”
The pedestrian simulator – the Highly Immersive Kinematic Experimental Research (HIKER) laboratory – uses ‘CAVE-based’ technology by projecting high-definition images onto glass plate walls that adapt to the user’s gaze and head position. Users can walk freely within the 9m (29ft) x 4m (13ft) room, so they can interact with a variety of situations, such as examining behaviour at pedestrian crossings.
The truck simulator has three degrees of motion and has been used to test the design of cycle lanes, for example, and to examine how truck driver behaviour changes at night in different weather conditions.
Most recently, the team have added the capability to connect the driving simulators and HIKER laboratory together so multiple human interactions can be studied simultaneously. This “Distributed Simulation” capability also allows them to add other static simulators into the mix, increasing the number of people who can take part at the same time.
The team also hope to add further capabilities by upgrading the driving simulator to include more recent technologies found in electric vehicles. They also plan to create a “reconfigurable transport simulator” that can be adapted to mimic a variety of different types of transport including cycling, electric scooter, driverless pods, public transport and wheelchairs.
“The population needs are changing as people make use of more environmentally friendly forms of transport,” said Woodthorpe. “It should help ensure cities are more able to meet the needs of the people who use them in the future in a more sustainable way.”
Sowing seeds of hope for Amazon conservation
In just 50 years, 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been lost. Agriculture, mining and an increasing population place insurmountable pressures on this critical global resource.
On its Southern edge, where the rainforest merges with the Cerrado tropical savanna, native species and indigenous communities coexist in a mosaic of different habitats. Yet, this region now stands as the Amazon’s hottest, driest and most degraded, grappling with advancing agriculture, soaring temperatures, frequent fires and extended dry seasons.
Here, the price paid by those who call this place home is steep – habitat loss and a diminished quality of life as Amazonian riches are given up to commerce and climate change.
Reforesting one of the most deforested regions on Earth
In Southern Amazonia, communities work together to rebuild their forest from the soil upwards, coordinated by initiatives like the Socio-Environmental Institute and the Xingu Seed Network – Brazil’s largest seed network contributing to reforestation efforts.
The network is supported by a team at Brazil’s State University of Mato Grosso (UNEMAT), led by ecologist Beatriz Schwantes Marimon. In partnership with local communities who collect and share seeds, the researchers are developing crucial new knowledge about why trees die, and which species are best adapted to climate change. Their mission is to replace lost trees by collecting, identifying and sowing seeds that have the best possible chances of survival.
“Because of our changing climate and the destruction of our forests, indigenous people are losing their capacity to learn and to read the sorts of environmental signals that would typically help them to decide what to plant and when,” says Professor Schwantes Marimon, who has worked in close collaboration with Professor Oliver Phillips in the University of Leeds School of Geography since 2008.
Together with University of Leeds researchers, Professor Schwantes Marimon’s team are training and collaborating with women rural seed collectors in the Xingu Seed Network to use scientific methods when they collect, process and identify seeds for reforestation. The research team’s support means that women are more likely to sell seeds which are best adapted to grow in a warmer world, generating income for their families.
Collaborating with community groups like this is just one initiative in UNEMAT’s 15-year partnership with the University. Professor Phillips’ group has provided training, research sabbaticals, computing innovation, and experimental and analytical expertise to conservation efforts on the ground in Mato Grosso.
Empowering communities for data-driven field research
“Together, our biggest challenge is to create communities who are measuring forests and learning how they are responding to climate change,” says Professor Phillips. “Working with Beatriz’s team at UNEMAT, we share a vision of building scientific understanding while also increasing equity. This means creating more opportunities for the Amazon rainforest’s people to study their 15,000 tree species, and to lead their own research.”
As part of their longer-term monitoring efforts, Professor Schwantes Marimon’s research group has created a network of long-term forest monitoring sites across Mato Grosso, connecting these with the pan-Amazon RAINFOR network and the pan-tropical ForestPlots.net initiative, led at the University of Leeds by Professor Phillips.
“It’s very important for us to have a platform like RAINFOR to support our work collecting, extracting and organising forest management data,” says Professor Schwantes Marimon. “We maintain and monitor the plots and carry out inventories, and our partners in Leeds provide us with training and support us to standardise our research protocols.”
Through the global ForestPlots.net network, UNEMAT and the University of Leeds are part of a much wider global community of tropical researchers, powering research with open data. It brings together teams from 64 countries to measure forests tree-by-tree in 6,900 long-term plots. These collaborations have so far revealed long-term carbon sinks, identified forest processes affected by climate change, and uncovered how tropical forests might respond to different future scenarios.
Roots of change
The network is building capacity for more equitable grassroots research, ushering in a quiet revolution for tropical forest science. As digital tools become more prevalent, Social Research Networks like these drive scientific agendas that are informed not by satellites or machine models, but by people. “We need fieldwork from those in contact with the trees and the communities they support, because, without this, we may simply lose touch with the systems we are trying to protect,” says Professor Phillips.
Now, 15 years into their research partnership with the University of Leeds, UNEMAT exemplifies the vision of empowering communities. “Many of our students are from poor families, they have not seen the world. So, exposing them to the wider academic community helps them to see they have the potential to become independent researchers,” says Professor Schwantes Marimon, who has seen a flourishing of postgraduate and doctoral training at UNEMAT in recent years, along with more potential students and community groups interested, motivated and educated to respond to the challenges of reforestation and Amazon conservation.
“Our students are now participating in international projects, and we also see our alumni going out into the world to teach and become Professors,” she continues. “But perhaps more importantly, our strong scientific expertise means we’re now consulted on political decisions about conservation. Step-by-step, the roots of change are slowly growing.”
From farming to the stars – reducing inequality through education
‘Research capacity strengthening’ is an abstract concept. To understand its transformative power, you need to hear the human stories behind it – such as Saul Phiri’s.
Born in Zambia in a village with no electricity, Saul is now a physics lecturer at the country’s Copperbelt University, carrying out research into the formation of stars. He is one of nine young researchers who gained their PhDs thanks to the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) project, led by the University of Leeds.
The project’s aim was to build research capacity in radio astronomy in eight African countries that will be part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) – the world’s largest radio telescope project. The SKA is installing hundreds of radio dishes in South Africa with an ultimate aim to have thousands of these across the whole continent to enable astronomers to study the sky in unprecedented detail.
However, the countries taking part – Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique and Mauritius – were starting from an unequal basis. In most of these developing countries, radio astronomy as a discipline was virtually non-existent, the subject was not taught at university and there was no research taking place.
A fledgling research network
Without a research base, it was clear these countries would struggle to reap all the potential benefits of being part of SKA – not just in terms of research, but the technology and advanced skills involved. And so the DARA project was born. Saul is now part of a fledgling African radio astronomy research network that the project was set up to create – a position that was beyond his imagination when he was growing up.
“In my village, the only professionals you saw were teachers and nurses, so those were the only careers I knew about. But even those seemed out of reach,” he recalls.
Saul was the youngest of eight and his subsistence farmer parents had no formal education. A bright student, he did well in primary school, but when it came to secondary school his family couldn’t afford the fees.
Determined to study, Saul started work on the family farm, and, aged 15, persuaded his mother to give him some land to work for himself. By selling the cotton he’d grown, he was able to raise enough to pay for his schooling and he joined a class of mature students finishing their education in the nearest town, leaving school with top marks.
When one of the teachers suggested he apply to Copperbelt University, Saul’s life and expectations began to change.
A scholarship built from sand
To pay for the university application form, Saul gathered sand from the river bed to sell as building material. The effort paid off: he was awarded a place to study natural sciences and a full scholarship covering accommodation and fees. Again, Saul graduated with top marks and became a teacher.
But after a few years, Saul was persuaded by one of his former lecturers at Copperbelt University to return to study. Funded by a scholarship from the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, he gained a Masters in mathematical sciences in Senegal.
The next stop was logically a PhD, but a future as a researcher still seemed out of reach, dependent as it is on funding and opportunities that are scarce in Africa. Saul returned to Zambia and was employed at Copperbelt University to help with marking and lab work, while he looked for a route forward.
That route was provided by DARA. Saul had come across the SKA while in Senegal, but only heard of DARA after he returned to Zambia. The project was offering graduates from eight African countries with degrees in physics or another relevant discipline the opportunity to undergo a basic eight-week training in radio astronomy. Trainees could then apply to study for a Master’s degree or in some cases, a PhD, usually in either South Africa or the UK.
After his initial training, Saul was awarded a DARA scholarship to study for a PhD, at the University of Central Lancashire, one of the project’s partners. “I can still remember the day I received the email to say I’d been successful – 25th of September, 2017,” he says. “I was so happy; I couldn’t believe this was really happening. It was wonderful as the DARA project took care of everything: tuition fees, travel costs, all my medical fees. I even saved enough from the stipend to help some of my siblings go through college and one has now qualified as a nurse.”
Support that opens doors
A key part of the DARA PhD package was annual home visits to build links with relevant institutions. This helped Saul to keep in touch with Copperbelt University during his PhD and he was subsequently invited to apply for a permanent position as a lecturer in physics, which he now holds.
“DARA really opened doors for me and life will never be the same again,” Saul says. “If I’d done my PhD locally, I wouldn’t have been taken to conferences, met so many researchers and built the networks I have. My PhD also gave me access to new techniques and advanced technologies and equipment that aren’t yet available in Africa. DARA has allowed me to develop as a researcher and that’s both a win for me and a win for my country.”
The original project, first funded in 2014, is now complete, with over 300 students having received basic training, 27 funded through DARA for their Master’s and nine to complete a PhD. Around 100 students have also received business advice, to help put their new skills to commercial use. The DARA team have secured some follow-on funding from the University of Leeds and will be applying for other grants to continue the project.
Professor Melvin Hoare, who heads the project, says: “Ghana, Zambia and Kenya were the first countries to join DARA and they now have radio astronomy research groups established. We see similar ambition in the other countries, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius. There are also many other DARA students with potential, like Saul, who’ve had doors open for them, and we want these opportunities to continue. There’s so much more we can do – we really don’t want to stop now!”
Photo below: Saul Phiri at Goonhilly Earth Station, Cornwall, one of the DARA partners.
