Wood waste could be used to make greener cleaning products. (Credit: Luis Ramírez / Pixabay)
Scientists at the Fudan University in Shanghai figured that sawdust waste contains many molecules that look just like phenol, a chemical often used in disinfectants to kill germs. Therefore using wood wastes could be a solution to greener cleaning products than the chemical-based. According to an article on Sciencenewsforstudents.org, Shicheng Zhang and his colleagues developed a sawdust soup that knocks out more than 99 percent of some disease-causing microbes, such as E. coli. It also killed anthrax bacteria and stopped flu viruses from being infectious. “Zhang and his colleagues didn’t stop at a sawdust disinfectant. They made disinfectants from other plant materials, too. Some of these started as bamboo powder. Others were made using rice straw. Plant materials that were richer molecules that release phenol-like compounds were best at killing microbes. One example was corn straw.”
