Team:NYU Shanghai/Human Practices

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On July 1st, 2019, Shanghai made headlines around China for being the first city to implement a garbage classification policy in a nationwide push to raise the country's recycling rate. In the brainstorming-stage, our project was focused on repurposing trash before it shifted focus to tissue-engineering. Even though our focus was now on tissue-engineering, it was important for our team to gather feedback and learn about how our project would be received in a newly waste-focused Shanghai. Since our project uses fish scales (classified as compostable trash), we decided to reach out to environmental groups and individuals working in city waste management to understand how our project would be received.

Professor Levon expressed great enthusiasm for our project and its feasibility. He focused specifically on electrical control of the gene we proposed. The electrically stimulative objects are capable of mimicking complex human tissues which could contribute in a positive manner to the field of tissue engineering.

If our project were to be implemented, how would it affect the newly waste-conscious city of Shanghai? According to Mr. Fan, who has experience working at two environmental technology/energy companies in Shanghai, our project could initially be difficult to implement as it would require the extra step of removing the scales from fish. But in the long-run, he agreed it could take off in Shanghai at the household and restaurant-level if the system is small and easy to operate.

When the trash classification policy was first implemented, it was advertised that sorting trash allowed recyclable items to be repurposed and utilized instead of burned. This was a concept most Shanghainese agreed with. Both Ziqing and Miguel from Collective Responsibility Shanghai and Zer’o Waste Shanghai/Boomi respectively expressed support for the idea of repurposing fish scales for medical purposes. Aside from contributing to tissue engineering in an environmentally-friendly way, repurposing food waste could also encourage people in Shanghai to rethink trash and the potential it caries to solve everyday problems when used properly. Being able to spread that message is good not just for the people of Shanghai, but for the entirety of China and the whole world.

Fan Jun | 樊俊

GM of Shanghai Fluid Environmental Technology Co. LTD

“If the system/equipment is small and easy to operate, households and resturants may be willing to utilize it.”

From his experience working as BD Manager of Veolia Environmental Services and Suez SITA, Mr. Fan shared with us how waste management works in Shanghai. Veolia helps the city of Shanghai reduce its waste volume while repurposing municipal solid waste as a useful green fuel source. Mr. Fan told us to consider that collecting fish scales as a separate form of waste would be difficult, but overall our idea was a creative way to repurpose waste.

Ziqing He | 何梓晴

Senior Student, NYU Shanghai. Research Intern, Collective Responsibility Shanghai

“Shanghai is leading China in the waste sorting/management movement- this project is a creative way to look at waste repurposing.”

In light of the policy changes, Ziqing has spent the past summer focusing her research on household waste in Shanghai. She helped us better understand the policy in depth and the effects it had on the city in the first month after going into effect.

Miguel Z. Boy

Co-Founder at Boomi

“Our end-goal is to help minimizing trash production in Shanghai- this project is a unique way to contribute to medicine while also being environmentally-friendly ”

From his experience working with Zer'o Waste Shanghai and Boomi, Miguel gave us insight into how the trash classification policy has been affecting people in Shanghai, and how it has impacted their goal to make people more aware of the trash they produce. He was interested in how our idea was able to repurpose otherwise useless waste into a very uselful medical instrument.

Professor Kalle Levon

Professor of Chemical and Biological Sciences, NYU Tandon School of Engineering

“This novel function is advantageous because it can produce a rigid structure to support tissue structures and control cellular growth by electric stimuli.”
Professor Levon is an expert in the field of organic electronics. He is a member of the National Institute of Health's Biointerfaces and Biomaterial's group, which meets multiple times a year to review applications in the fields of diagnostic devices and tissues engineering scaffolds. He was interested in the electric control of the gene that we proposed and stressed the importance of medical applications. Not only the usage of the implants as we discussed, but he also suggested that creating the model object is also significant. The electrically stimulative objects are capable of mimicking the complex human tissues, and then we do not have to have body donations. Moreover, he mentioned that the electric stimulus itself could be used not only for the direct gene control but the changes in many kinds of molecules such as enzymes and membrane proteins. According to his insights, we investigated possible molecules that could be easily stimulated by electric signals.