At Southern Illinois University Carbondale, researchers have quietly reframed one of modernity's most stubborn contradictions: the same plastic choking the world's oceans is, at its molecular core, carbon — the same element that sustains all life. By engineering yeast to bridge that gap, Associate Professor Lahiru Jayakody and his team have produced a prototype cookie that transforms discarded bottles into edible nutrition, asking whether the waste stream of industrial civilization might yet become a source of sustenance for the billions who will need feeding by 2050.
Scientists Engineer Yeast to Transform Plastic Waste Into Edible Protein Cookies
Plastic is carbon and food is carbon.
Mark
So they're literally putting plastic into food? That sounds like a health nightmare.
Mimi
Not directly. They break the plastic down into its molecular components first, then feed those molecules to engineered yeast. The yeast rebuilds them into proteins and vitamins. The plastic itself never touches the final product.
Luke
But how do we know it's actually safe? The article says safety testing is complete, but it also says institutional approval for taste tests is still pending. Those are two different things.
Mimi
Fair point. They've done lab analysis showing the cookies are safe to eat, but they haven't had humans actually consume them yet. That approval is still in process.
Mark
Why yeast? Why not just use chemical processes to break down the plastic and rebuild it?
Mimi
Because yeast is already a biological factory. We use it to produce insulin, for example. It's more efficient than chemical synthesis in many cases, and it works at lower temperatures and pressures.
Luke
The article mentions they use a proprietary breakdown technique called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution. How much of the process is actually novel versus standard industrial chemistry?
Mimi
The breakdown method was developed by Ken Anderson at SIU. The yeast engineering is the novel part—programming multiple strains to produce specific food compounds from waste-derived molecules.
Mark
When could someone actually buy these cookies?
Mimi
Jayakody says within a few years, but that's assuming funding continues and regulatory approval moves forward. Right now they're still adding some ingredients separately—starch, fiber, sweetener. The goal is to have yeast produce those too.
Luke
The article emphasizes space exploration and disaster zones, but realistically, where would this technology be deployed first?
Mimi
Probably in controlled environments where resources are genuinely limited and the cost of traditional food is prohibitive. Space missions, submarines, maybe refugee camps. Consumer markets would come later, if at all.
Mark
Does this actually solve plastic pollution, or just redirect it?
Mimi
It redirects it into food, which is useful if you're hungry. But it doesn't reduce plastic production. It's a use for waste that already exists, not a prevention strategy.
Le Pouls
- With global hunger projected to reach 30 percent of the population by 2050 and plastic waste accumulating in the billions of tons, the urgency to find solutions that address both crises at once has never been greater.
- The breakthrough hinges on a counterintuitive insight — plastic and food are both carbon — unlocked by a high-pressure, high-temperature technique that shatters tough polymers into fragments small enough for engineered microbes to consume and rebuild as proteins, vitamins, and fats.
- Flavor and institutional approval remain the immediate obstacles: human taste tests await regulatory clearance, and researchers are racing to engineer yeast strains that produce vanillin and beta-carotene to elevate the cookies from survival ration to something people might actually want to eat.
- Early aroma evaluations suggest most participants would eat µBites under resource-constrained conditions, and NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge backing signals that the technology is being taken seriously beyond the laboratory.
- The trajectory points outward — from disaster zones and submarines to lunar and Martian colonies — wherever traditional agriculture is impossible and every atom of matter must be made to serve double duty.
At Southern Illinois University Carbondale, researchers have quietly reframed one of modernity's most stubborn contradictions: the same plastic choking the world's oceans is, at its molecular core, carbon — the same element that sustains all life. By engineering yeast to bridge that gap, Associate Professor Lahiru Jayakody and his team have produced a prototype cookie that transforms discarded bottles into edible nutrition, asking whether the waste stream of industrial civilization might yet become a source of sustenance for the billions who will need feeding by 2050.
A cookie made from plastic bottles is not a dystopian joke but a working prototype emerging from a laboratory at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Associate Professor Lahiru Jayakody and graduate student Sandhya Jayasekara developed µBites — microbites — as part of NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge, designing a food production system for environments where resupply is impossible. The same logic, they argue, applies to disaster zones, submarines, and food-insecure regions on Earth.
The process begins with PET plastic, the material used in most beverage bottles. A proprietary technique called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution, developed by SIU geology professor Ken Anderson, uses water, oxygen, heat, and pressure to fracture both plastic and plant biomass into molecular fragments. Engineered yeast strains — including ordinary baker's yeast — then consume those fragments and reassemble them into proteins, vitamins, and fats. Fiber, starch, and sweetener are added before the mixture is extruded through a 3D printer into finished cookies.
Flavor is the frontier. Jayasekara has engineered yeast to produce vanillin from plant biomass and beta-carotene from plastic-derived ethylene glycol, nudging the cookies from emergency ration toward something more recognizable as food. Safety testing is complete; human taste trials await institutional approval. Those who evaluated early batches by aroma alone said they would eat them if circumstances demanded it.
The researchers' ambition reaches further than cookies. They want engineered microbes to eventually produce every ingredient in the recipe, closing the loop entirely. With global food demand expected to rise by as much as 56 percent by 2050 and plastic waste compounding by the year, Jayakody sees the work not as novelty but as necessity — a technology that could simultaneously shrink the waste stream and expand the food supply, on Earth and eventually beyond it.
A cookie made from plastic waste sounds like a cautionary tale, but researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale have engineered it into something else entirely: a working prototype for turning discarded materials into edible nutrition.
The cookies, called µBites (microbites), are the product of a collaboration between Associate Professor Lahiru Jayakody and graduate student Sandhya Jayasekara. Their work began as part of a NASA-led initiative to develop food production methods for deep-space exploration, where resources are scarce and resupply is impossible. The same technology, however, could eventually serve environments on Earth—disaster zones, submarines, resource-limited regions where hunger remains endemic.
The core insight is deceptively simple: plastic is carbon, and food is carbon. Rather than treating plastic waste as a disposal problem, Jayakody's team treats it as a feedstock. They start with polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, the plastic used in most beverage bottles. Before engineered yeast can work with it, however, the material must be broken down into molecules small enough for microbes to consume. The team uses a proprietary technique called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution—developed by SIU Carbondale geology professor Ken Anderson—which applies water and oxygen at high temperature and pressure to fracture tough polymers and plant biomass into digestible fragments.
Once broken down, the material is fed to specially programmed yeast strains, including baker's yeast. These microbes rebuild the molecular components into proteins, vitamins, fats, and other food ingredients. The researchers then add fiber, starch, and sweetener before extruding the mixture through a 3D printer to form the finished cookies. Safety testing has been completed, though institutional approval for human taste tests is still pending. When participants evaluated the aroma of early batches, most said they would be willing to eat the cookies in resource-constrained situations.
Flavor remains a challenge for broader consumer appeal. Jayasekara has engineered baker's yeast to produce vanillin—the compound responsible for vanilla flavor—from plant biomass. Another yeast strain converts ethylene glycol derived from PET plastic into beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A. These enhancements transform the cookies from survival ration into something closer to an actual food product.
The long-term vision extends well beyond cookies. Jayakody and his team want engineered microbes to produce most of the cookies' basic ingredients, including the starch, fiber, and sweetener currently added separately. If development continues on schedule, µBites could reach public consumption within a few years. But the real ambition is systemic: technology that converts waste into food ingredients could address two of humanity's most pressing problems simultaneously—the 30 percent of the global population expected to face hunger by 2050, and the billions of tons of plastic accumulating in landfills and oceans.
The research was funded by NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge and a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program grant. Results were presented at the ACS Fall 2026 symposium in August. Jayakody frames the work not as a novelty but as a necessity: "Global food demand is expected to rise 35 to 56 percent by 2050. The way to address that, I believe, is by using microbes." The technology could eventually support life in submarines, disaster zones, and potential human settlements on the moon or Mars—places where traditional agriculture is impossible and every resource must be recycled or created from waste.
Citations marquantes
Microbes are very clever. So we are using their traits to solve the problems we created.— Lahiru Jayakody, Associate Professor, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Global food demand is expected to rise 35–56% by 2050. The way to address that, I believe, is by using microbes.— Lahiru Jayakody
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