Gelatin is best known as the main ingredient in jellies. Yet this humble store-cupboard staple has many applications in consumer goods and industry.
Research has found that gelatin works as a powerful biodegradable alternative to plastic in textiles, fashion, and electronic wearables. It could also play a part in climate change adaptation as a biobased method of cooling buildings sustainably.
Spun jelly
Gelatin is a water-soluble protein that falls under the category of soft biopolymers. Biology is built on these soft materials: DNA, protein, and tissue are all examples of this group in action.
Soft, edible gelatin may not seem like it has the durability to function as an input in consumer goods but research is showing that it could rival plastic or cotton in apparel manufacturing.
Gelatin could be the foundation of sustainable new fashion textiles, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. Led by Eldy Lázaro Vásquez, the team developed a DIY machine that turns gelatin into textile materials that can replace resource-intensive cotton or plastic.
The production process starts with a liquid gelatin mixture. The researchers built a custom machine that draws out the gelatin into long fibres suitable for spinning. The fibres are dyeable at this stage. A fruit extract called genipin is added to make the fibres stronger.
The fibres of this material dissolve in hot water in minutes. Despite this, producers can customise the physical properties of the gelatin fibre so that it is resilient enough to withstand cold water and rainfall while it is being used.
Gelatin for high-tech apparel
The researchers who came up with the gelatin clothing textile are targeting the wearable tech market. Wearable tech refers to clothing that contain sensors and circuit boards, making the material sensitive and adaptive to environmental and bodily changes.
It is difficult to make wearable tech circular because of the economics of recycling. Companies still cannot easily disentangle electronic material from clothing fibre at low enough cost to make profit. Gelatin solves this because it can easily dissolve in water, leaving just electronic material behind for re-use.
Jelly ephemera
Gelatin textiles could also provide biodegradable, sustainable alternatives to plastic in single use applications.
Events and hospitality are areas where this biodegradable feedstock could find its niche. Tablecloths, food packaging, and branded apparel are all part and parcel of festivals and conferences. These products have a short lifespan and often end up as littler in the open environment.
Make-your-own
Beyond its versatility, gelatin is a special feedstock from a socio-economic perspective since it lends itself easily to decentralised, DIY production of sustainable goods.
Unlike seaweed-based alginate, for example, gelatin is on sale in just about every supermarket. The material is easy to process, mould, and customise, even without high-tech industrial facilities.
This makes the input ideal for small producers around the world working with low-tech tools.
The University of Colorado Boulder researchers showcased the DIY ethic that comes with gelatin feedstock.
For about $650, they say, people can download open-source blueprints from this website and build the gelatin textile-making machine themselves. Their innovation cuts out intermediaries: with a small budget and some technical know-how, people can make their own biodegradable fibres.
Fast (sustainable) fashion
Gelatin-based textiles can be thrown away without toxic after-effects. Using gelatin, the fashion industry could craft apparel that comes with far less environmental harm than the plastic-based fibres that dominate today.
Biodegradability was the driving idea behind the gelatin fabric recipe developed by Sanskriti Gupta, product consultant and fashion manufacturer.
Gupta came up with a method to create a gelatin material that can be used to make biodegradable bags or other textile products.
She says her product takes seriously the idea that one third of our plastics end up in the ecosystem. Designers must anticipate the flaws in global recycling systems and create products that can break down in nature without harming it.
Her material combines gelatin powder, glycerine, and plant-based starch. These three main ingredients are mixed and heated for 10 – 20 minutes, then left to cure in a mould for up to five days, then sewn together into its final form. The material is endlessly customisable using natural dyes – for example, turmeric powder or tea bags.
The recipe for Gupta’s gelatin material is simple, allowing anyone to produce the sustainable material without capital intensive equipment or ingredients. It is available online so that the public can copy and build on the formula.
Circular sources
Waste gelatin is an inherently sustainable feedstock. Using up the byproducts of industries like agriculture, fisheries, and food processing to create useful products avoids the energy use required to cultivate brand new resources geared specifically for consumer goods.
There are lots of places to source waste gelatine for startups and producers looking to work with gelatin. One is the apparel industry. Approximately half the gelatin-rich skins used in leather making are discarded during the process of manufacturing, leaving a huge pool of potential inputs.
Gelatin from leather waste does not meet the hygiene standards required of human food products. However, researchers at Shaanxi University of Science and Technology in 2022 found another application as a circular, biodegradable non-food packaging film.
The researchers point out that hoovering up leather industry waste in this way prevents pollutants from apparel making from entering and contaminating the environment. Reducing industry waste by valorising it is an economic way to prevent byproducts from pooling in large, dangerous concentrations.
Circular gelatin-based materials could help make the food industry more sustainable too by mopping up their byproducts. Gelatin is a protein usually derived from the bones and hooves of animals. Commonly, producers will landfill any gelatin that is not suitable for food or cosmetics. Livestock waste offers another abundant and cheap circular resource pool that can pose environmental hazards if it is not upcycled.
Another large generator of waste gelatin is the seafood industry. Currently, 75 percent of total fish weight are scales, skins, heads, viscera, and bones that cannot be eaten. Shrimp shells are another rich source of the compound.
Finding industrial uses for seafood waste is vital to make the most of precious marine resources. Gelatin from marine sources are also halal, overcoming religious objections to material sourced from pigs or cattle.
Currently, gelatin cannot be made using plants. Yet laboratory fermentation is an emerging source of vegan gelatin that avoids animal slaughter. US startup Geltor brews gelatin inside microbes, which are genetically programmed to churn out exact replicas of animal-derived gelatins. This new way of producing gelatin breaks the link between biomaterials and polluting livestock industries.
Smart jelly
Scientists intrigued by its gel-forming ability have also been exploring gelatin’s potential for use as a smart packaging material. This refers to packaging that can detect and respond to changes in its environment, alerting consumers to food spoilage or other contaminants.
Studies have found ways of making gelatin packaging that changes visually when the food it has packed is past its best. Various studies have explored embedded natural dyes in gelatin films that change colour as the acidity levels of foods change, one proxy for spoilage.
Gelatin is a good base material for these pH sensitive dyes because it is naturally film-forming. It is also biodegradable, cutting the forever-waste associated with petroleum plastics.
More research still needs to be done to make sensitive gelatin films stronger and moisture resistant. This will be essential if gelatin films are going to find wider uses in the food industry since the material will have to withstand long periods of transport and storage.
Cooler construction
The most intriguing application for gelatin in recent years came out of China last year, when scientists demonstrated that the material could be used in a sunlight cooling material for buildings.
Researchers from Sichuan University showed that an aerogel sheet made from gelatin and salmon DNA could lower a building’s temperature by around 6 degrees celsius in clouds and 16 degrees in direct sun.
The aerogel is meant to act as a passive layer around the house that reflects more light than it receives. In effect, it forms a giant mirror that bounces visible light away from the building rather than allowing it to penetrate it and turn into heat.
The finding demonstrates the power of gelatin as an ingredient in biobased climate adaptation technologies. The major advantage of using a biomaterial coolant over air conditioning is that it uses far less energy to manufacture and run.
Demand for low-energy cooling materials is set to increase as heatwaves become more frequent and intense under climate change. These technologies could prove particularly vital in cooling urban areas of energy-insecure developing countries that experience the most extreme effects of the climate crisis.
The key challenge for both these technologies lies in scale-up and manufacturing. However, this kind of boundary-pushing research showcases the range of applications that gelatin offers beyond its traditional role as a food ingredient.
