Turning food waste into food-grade medical products

WHAT if cashew nuts, durian husks and banana peels didn’t have to end up in the trash bin, but could be made into medical-grade products? Local medtech player N&E Innovations has been doing just that for over two years now, turning everyday food waste into products such as masks and disinfectants.

“There is a lot of food waste in the world, especially those that are just incinerated or dumped into landfills. But actually a lot of this waste is valuable – we can upcycle them and make them into more useful products,” said Didi Gan, the company’s founder and a biomedical science graduate from the University of Melbourne.

Gan and her team started by converting cashew nut skins and husks into an active antimicrobial compound that they named Vikang99, which is able to kill 99.99 per cent of bacteria and viruses such as Sars-Cov-2, H1N1 and salmonella, based on laboratory tests.