homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Eco-friendly geometry: smart pasta can halve packaging waste at no extra cost

Mathematics to the rescue!

Mihai Andrei
May 11, 2021 @ 10:00 am

share Share

Pasta comes in a variety of shapes and sizes — from the plain and simple to all sorts of quirky spirals. But for the most part, they have one thing in common: they’re not using space very effectively. But a new study may change that.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have found a way to change that, designing new types of pasta that use less packaging and are easier to transport, reducing both transportation emissions and packaging plastic.

Unconventional pasta shapes use up less space but spring to life in water. Image credits: Morphing Matter Lab. Carnegie Mellon University.

Pasta is big business. In 2019, nearly 16 million tons of pasta were produced in the world — up from 7 million tons produced 20 years ago. That adds up to billions of packets that are transported, stored, and ultimately discarded across the world.

Since pasta often has such odd shape, pasta packages often end with a lot of wasted space, which also has to be transported and stored. Using less space means less trucks driving across states and less plastic.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Morphing Matter Lab director Lining Yao had an idea on how that could be reduced — with a bit of help from an old friend: geometry.

“By tuning the grooving pattern, we can achieve both zero (e.g., helices) and nonzero (e.g., saddles) Gaussian curvature geometries,” the study reads. It then goes on to translate what this means. “This mechanism allows us to demonstrate approaches that could improve the efficiency of certain food manufacturing processes and facilitate the sustainable packaging of food, for instance, by creating morphing pasta that can be flat-packed to reduce the air space in the packaging.”

They started out with a computer simulation to see how different shapes would achieve the goal. They tried various designs, including helixes, saddles, twists, and even boxes. After they settled on a few efficient shapes, they put it to the boiler test — quite literally.

Flat-packed pasta before and after boiling. Image credits: Morphing Matter Lab. Carnegie Mellon University.

Speaking to Inverse, Yao says wasted space could be reduced by 60% by flat-packing pasta — and that’s just the start of it. The method could also be used for things like wagashi or gelatin products. The method could also be used to design more complex and fancy shapes for special occasions. In dry form, a piece of pasta could look like a disc, but when boiled, it could become a rose flower.

Credits: Carnegie Mellon University..

However, there are limitations to study. Flour dough is known to be a complex material. It can have different proportions of water, starch, gluten, fiber, and fat. Flour dough also has variable, nonlinear properties, which makes it hard to anticipate how different types of pasta would behave — this was just a proof of concept.

Researchers recommend more quantitative models of assessment to see how different materials with complicated groove shapes and patterns would behave.

The study was published in Science.

share Share

What's Seasonal Body Image Dissatisfaction and How Not to Fall into Its Trap

This season doesn’t have to be about comparison or self-criticism.

Why a 20-Minute Nap Could Be Key to Unlocking 'Eureka!' Moments Like Salvador Dalí

A 20-minute nap can boost your chances of a creative breakthrough, according to new research.

The world's oldest boomerang is even older than we thought, but it's not Australian

The story of the boomerang goes back in time even more.

Swarms of tiny robots could go up your nose, melt the mucus and clean your sinuses

The "search-and-destroy” microrobot system can chemically shred the resident bacterial biofilm.

What if Every Roadkill Had a Memorial?

Road ecology, the scientific study of how road networks impact ecosystems, presents a perfect opportunity for community science projects.

Fireball Passes Over Southeastern United States

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a bolide!

What side do cats prefer to sleep on? The left side, and there's a good reason for that

The fluffier side of science.

This Bear Lived Two Years With a Barrel Lid Stuck on Its Neck Before Finally Being Freed

A Michigan bear wore a plastic ring for two years. Somehow, it’s doing just fine.

The James Webb telescope just found a planet by actually ‘seeing’ it

It's exactly what we were hoping from JWST.

Is Being Filthy Rich Immoral? It Depends Who You Ask

The world's 8 richest people have more wealth than the poorest few billion.