The University of Leiden in cooperation with University of Groningen make up the Dutch Team, Suckersilk, whose members are Jonah Anderson, Georgy Bubnenkov, Maarten Lubbers, Floor Stel, Daniël Tan, Laurens ter Haar and Daan van Tol.
Laundry detergent, sunscreen, cosmetics, food supplements, paint and more contain hundreds of thousands of plastic microbeads per bottle. After their limited use, they end up down the drain and released into the environment.
The team developed SuckerSpheres, a sustainable alternative to plastic microbeads made from the protein Suckerin, found in the sucker ring teeth of the Humboldt squid. The Suckerin is produced in a sustainable way using E. coli.
